Quotes about parents page 3

“At that moment, she cannot think of a more reckless, irrational thing than choosing to become a parent.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“What it's like to be a parent: It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Wedding

Source: The Wedding

Love, Heart Touching, For Parents

“There are books… which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Life, Books, Lovers, Passion

“I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through! I guess it's some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did.”

Art Spiegelman (1948) cartoonist from the United States

Source: The Complete Maus

Life

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 360

Life, God, Children

“No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us.”

Brad Meltzer book The Inner Circle

Source: The Inner Circle

For Parents

“In any event, parents never underestimated the abilities of their own children. Quite the reverse. Sometimes it was well nigh impossible for a teacher to convince the proud father or mother that their beloved offspring was a complete nitwit.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Children, Teachers

“I just want ambitious teenagers to know it is totally fine to be quite, observant kids. Besides being a delight to your parents, you will find you have plenty of time later to catch up.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Everything a baby does strikes a parent as the most magical thing he/she has ever seen.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Wedding

Source: The Wedding

Baby

“Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try." (Adrian)”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Perfection

“Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.”

Orson Scott Card book Empire

Source: Empire

Behavior, Time

“You don't understand,' she said, and there was a puzzling trace of resentment in her voice. 'Children never do. The love a parent has for a child, there's nothing else like it. No other love so consuming.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Love, Children, Understanding

“This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

Help, Hurt

“Even if I'm following the path my parents set, I need to take my own dreams and beliefs with me.”

Natsumi Ando (1970) Manga artist

Source: Kitchen Princess, Vol. 05

Dreams

“Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next moves.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Hope

“I think we make our own luck. Our parents give us life, but what we do with that life is our own responsibility.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Underworld

Life, Thinking

“She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

“I want to know about my mom. And other stuff. I want to know the whole story, good or bad.”
“Me, too,” said Gazzy. “I want to find my parents so I can tell’m what total scuzzes they are. Like, ‘Hi, mom and dad, you’re such scum!”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Moms

“Don't let what your parents do disappoint you.”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Disappointment

“It's hard to imagine her ever having felt lost, but it's impossible to know the people your parents were before they were your parents.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

People, Imagination

“Someone's parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Singing

“She felt as if she bled her regret and loneliness from her very pores, and yet she could not shape those feelings into any sentiment she could imagine her parents could bear reading.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Feeling, Imagination, Reading, Loneliness

“I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Imagination

“So now I'm thinking about it. I'm imagining sitting down with my parents and actually saying, "I'm gay." And you know what? It makes me a little mad. I mean, straight guys don't have to sit their parents down and tell them they like girls.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

Guy, Imagination, Girl, Thinking

“Baby, we have no choice of what color we're born or who our parents are or whether we're rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we're here.”

Mildred D. Taylor book Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Source: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Color, Baby

“Best friends are always together, always whispering and laughing and running, always at each other's house, having dinner, sleeping over. They are practically adopted by each other's parents. You can't pry them apart.”

Jerry Spinelli book Loser

Source: Loser

Sleep, Housing

“You grow up to become living proof of your parents' limitations. Their less-than masterpiece.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

“Would you stop thinking about what everyone wants. Stop thinking
about what I want, what he wants, what your parents want. What do you want?”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

“Don’t simply settle for what your parents had. You can go further than that. You can do more, have more, be more.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

“Walk out of this with your parents, the stones, and Darroc dead, Ms. Lane, and I‘ll give you the bloody thing.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Dead

“Emma is a mattress who got thrown off the truck when her parents split up. It's not like you can blame a mattress when people don't tie it down tight enough.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

People

“College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night?”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Life, Time, Night

“My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Books, World, Sadness, School

“We're taught to expect unconditional love from our parents, but I think it is more the gift our children give us. It's they who love us helplessly, no matter what or who we are.”

Kathryn Harrison book The Kiss

Source: The Kiss

Love, Children, Thinking

“Parents who discipline their child by discussing the consequences of their actions produce children who have better moral development, compared to children whose parents use authoritarian methods and punishment.”

Simon Baron-Cohen (1958) psychologist and author

Source: Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty

“I think of myself as a freewheeling bisexual," added Magnus.
"Please never say those words in front of my parents," said Alec.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“i remembered the myth about Andromeda and how she had been chained to a rock by her own parents as a sacrifice to a sea monster. Maybe she'd gotten too many F's on her report card or something.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Sea

“… I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. And then I thought, perhaps that is what it means to be a [parent] - to teach your child to live without you.”

Nicole Krauss (1974) American novelist

“It feels like I'm babysitting in the Twilight Zone. I keep waiting for the parents to show up because we are out of chips and diet cokes.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Feeling, Waiting

“At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

World

“We're [parents]) always bluffing, pretending we know best, when most of the time we're just praying we won't screw up too badly.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

“If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Children, Feeling, For Parents

“Magnus glared at him out of gold-green eyes. “If I wanted to lie on a couch and
complain to someone about my parents, I’d hire a psychiatrist.”
“Ah,” said Jace. “But my services are free.”
“I heard that about you.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Lie

“When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Thinking, Hurt

“She took out a shiny folded pamphlet, the kind they kept stacked in clear plastic stands in hospital waiting rooms. "How to Come Out to Your Parents," she read out loud. "LUKE. Don't be ridiculous. Simon's not gay, he's a vampire.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Waiting, Reading

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

People, Beauty, Time, Beauty

“That's the thing about being the product of happily marries parents, You grow up thinking the fairy tale is real, and more than that, you think you're entitled to live it. So far, though, it wasn't working out as planned.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

“I can pick a lock. How do you think I got into my parents' liquor cabinet in middle school?”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

School, Thinking

“You’re seventeen. You’re supposed to be dealing with school and hormones and dim-witted parents. You’re supposed to be finding out who you are as a person.”
“But I already know who I am,” Valkyrie said. “I’m a world-breaker.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Kingdom of the Wicked

World, School, Personality

“My parents meant well, but the road to Hell is paved with publicity stunts.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Source: Damned

Hell

“How can such scary looking parents create something so cute?”

Chetan Bhagat book 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Source: 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

“It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love, God

“Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice & private initiative -- the building blocks of success throughout our society.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Education, Success

“After our mom died, her parents (our grandparents) had this big court battle with dad. After six lawyers, two fistfights, and a near fatal attack with a spatula (don't ask), they won the right to keep Sadie with them in England.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Moms

“I have that hypocrisy of a parent in that I'm like,'Come on, you've got to toughen up at the same time let me take care of that for you.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

“There's no winning arguments with your parents”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

“Isabelle and Sebastian? Hardly. Sebastian’s a nice guy – Isabelle only likes dating thoroughly inappropriate boys our parents will hate. Mundanes, Downworlders, petty crooks…”
“Thanks,” Simon said. “I’m glad to be classed with the criminal element.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Hate, Guy, Boy

“I have heard people say that they felt closer to their parents after they have died. Maybe if I treat people as if they were dead, I could get along with them better”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

People, Dead

“She wants you to be a god," I told him.
"I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

God, Heart

“Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Happiness, Children

“Sun is bad for you. Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat… college”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Sun

“Some parents let their young kids win at games, but mine never did.

I don't think it was because they were particularly competitive, they just wanted to teach me a valuable lesson.

Life is mostly just learning how to lose.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Saga, Vol. 3

Life, Game, Thinking, Learning

“It was always the view of my parents… that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.”

Ian McEwan (1948) British author

People, Weather

“All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

World, Time, Dead

“… I do not tell you often enough, dear Mother, how very grateful I am that I am yours. It is a rare parent
who would offer a child such latitude and understanding. It is an even rarer one who calls a daughter
friend. I do love you, dear Mama.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: To Sir Phillip, With Love

Love, Understanding, Daughters

“Parents aren’t the people you come from. They’re the people you want to be, when you grow up.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Variant: Parents aren't the people you come from. They're the people you want to be, when you grow up.
Source: Handle with Care

People, For Parents

“When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Standup Comic (1999)

“Parents are like God because you wanna know they're out there, and you want them to think well of you, but you really only call when you need something.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

God, Thinking, Family, For Parents

“Don't be ridiculous, Charlie, people love the parents who beat their kids in department stores. It's the ones who just let their kids wreak havoc that everybody hates.”

Christopher Moore book A Dirty Job

Source: A Dirty Job

Love, Hate, People, For Parents

“It’s tempting to wish for the perfect boss, the perfect parent, or the perfect outfit. But maybe the best any of us can do is not to quit, play the hand we’ve been dealt, and accessorize what we’ve got.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Perfection

“… one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret insanity and brokenness and rage.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

Secret, Rage

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Gratitude, Powerful

“Parents are the barometers of emotions for children and it has a domino effect.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Source: Where Rainbows End

“Now, Max, I think we both know your parents aren't missionaries."
I opened my eyes wide. "No? Well, for God's sake, don't tell them. They'd be crushed. Thinking they're doing the
Lord's work and all.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

God, Thinking

“Tom has a theory that homosexuals and single women in their thirties have natural bonding: both being accustomed to disappointing their parents and being treated as freaks by society.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

Women, Disappointment, Nature

“Someone asked us later, "Didn't you wonder why no one came across you sooner?"
Did I wonder?
When you see your parents zipped up in black body bags on the Jellicoe Road like they're some kind of garbage, don't you know?
Wonder dies.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

“Spending time with you just feels… right, somehow. Easy, like the way it's supposed to be. Like it is with my parents. They're just comfortable together, and I remember growing up thinking that one day I wanted to have that, too.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Time

“Percy," my father said, "what exactly do you mean?" "Kronos couldn't have risen if it hadn't been for a lot of demigods who felt abandoned by their parents," I said. "They felt angry, resentful, and unloved, and they had a good reason.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“Tradionally, parents made decisions for a child, because presumably they are looking out for his or her best interests. But if they are blinded, instead, by the best interests of another one of their children, the system breaks down.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Children, Decision

“Artistic talent is far more common than the talent toartistic talent. Any parent with a hard hand can crush it, but to nurture it is much more difficult.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

“Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

As quoted in Good Advice (1993) by William Safire, p. 125

Children, Fear, Reading

“Sunday school: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Children, School, Evil

“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.”

John Updike book The Centaur

Source: The Centaur (1963), Ch. 4

Wisdom, Children, Education, School

“It didn't take a trauma to make you wear a mask. It didn't take your parents getting shot… or cosmic rays or a power ring… Just the perfect combination of loneliness and despair.”

Mark Millar Kick-Ass

Source: Kick-Ass

Loneliness, Perfection, Despair

“Just as our parents quieted us when we were noisy by putting us in front of the television set, maybe we're now learning to quiet our own adult noise with Prozac.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Learning

“Are parents always more ambitious for their children than they are for themselves?”

Jeffrey Archer book A Prisoner of Birth

Source: A Prisoner of Birth

“I always wanted to be a juvenile delinquent but my parents wouldn't let me.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

“Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave
When they think that their children are naive.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"Baby, What Makes the Sky Blue?"

Children, Thinking

“People want to believe they know other people. Parents want to believe they know their kids. Wives want to believe they know their husbands.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

People

“We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.”

Robertson Davies book The Rebel Angels

Source: The Rebel Angels

Way, Knowledge, Thinking, Time

“I am a thornbush, bristling from the overattention of my parents, and he is a man of a million little fatherly stab wounds, and my thorns fit perfectly into them.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Love

“Isabelle snorted, "All the boysgay. In this truck, anyway. Well, not you, Simon."
"You noticed," said Simon.
"I think of myself as a freewheeling bisexual," added Magnus.
"Please never say those words in front of my parents," said Alec.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: A stodgy parent is not fun at all! What a child wants - and DESERVES - is a parent who is SPARKY!”

Roald Dahl book Danny, the Champion of the World

Danny, the Champion of the World (1975)
Context: A Message to Children Who Have Read This Book - When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY.