Jesmyn Ward Quotes

I'm attracted to stories that deal with the family and what it's like to be a member of that family, whether it's together or apart, given the pressures that are put on it by the outside world.

I write about families. That is who we are.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids' reaction to that divorce.

Our house was always full of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.

When cancer affects somebody in the family, the whole family is affected.

A politician can go out and speak for him or herself, but actually for the family it's difficult - although it does bind you.

I had a big family - two older sisters and a younger brother. My family was like moving around a lot so I lived in a lot of small towns. My father was very restless.

Our most basic institution of family desperately needs help and support from the extended family and the public institutions that surround us. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins can make a powerful difference in the lives of children. Remember that the expression of love and encouragement from an extended family member will often provide the right influence and help a child at a critical time.

The family that raised me are awesome people and they are my mother and my father and my brother and my sister. I've never viewed them as these "strangers" that took over. It's never been this crazy, dramatic, Lifetime-movie situation. It's been chill.

You could say that this book is ripped from the headlines, but that wouldn't be fair. Bret Anthony Johnston's riveting novel picks up where the tabloids leave off, and takes us places even the best journalism can't go. Remember Me Like This is a wise, moving, and troubling novel about family and identity, and a clear-eyed inventory of loss and redemption.

Happy or Unhappy, families are all mysterious.

The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms. . . and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.

You are never alone in Afghanistan. You are always in the company of others, usually family. You don't understand yourself really as an individual, you understand yourself as part of something bigger than yourself. Family is so central to your identity, to how you make sense of your world, it is very dramatic, and therefore an amazing source of storytelling, a source of fiction for me.

Against the long years when family bonds make up all that is happiest in life, there must always be reckoned those moments of agitation and revolution, during which the bosom of a family is the most unrestful and disturbing place in existence.

I had older brothers who would pick on me, and injustice always boiled my blood.

We are seeing it. We are seeing the fabric of this country fall apart, and it’s falling apart because of single moms.

But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.

I didn't have a blueprint from my childhood that I could call on, which is an enormous deficit when you're trying to put together a family life. I didn't see a family life where men were thriving inside of it. You know, my dad tended to blame the family for his inability to achieve what he wanted to achieve, you know? So, unfortunately, I was coming from that particular frame of mind.

Having kids had a big effect on me, but nothing more than when they started to get older- that really made me realize how fleeting each moment is.

es, I spend a lot of time in Reading because we live in Oxfordshire and so we're always just in and out of each other's houses. It's very much the family that it always has been. But there's no comparison with Hollywood as such.

it seemed to me that I had never met another person on earth as discouraging to my happiness as my father. and it appeared that I had the same effect upon him.

Ka found it very soothing: for the first time in years, he felt part of a family. In spite of the trials and responsibilities of what was called 'family', he saw now the joys of its unyielding togetherness, and was sorry not to have known more of it in his life.

I had a very close family and I couldn't get away with anything.

You'll see a lot of funny stuff, you'll see a lot of daddy knows best stuff, you'll see a lot of me and my wife trying to hold the family together.

When my father would come home from the track after a good day, the whole room would light up; it was fairyland. But when he lost, it was black. In our house, it was always either a wake ... or a wedding.