Quotes About Hard Parents

“Some things are hard to explain to your parents. Some things are hard to explain, period, but your parents especially are never going to understand them.”

— John Darnielle

“Sometimes ... I think parents work so hard to keep us from making their mistakes, they won't allow us to make our own.”

— Charles Sheehan-Miles

“There are two different types of time. Chronos time is what we live in. It's regular time. It's one minute at a time, staring down the clock until bedtime time. It's ten excruciating minutes in the Target line time, four screaming minutes in time-out time, two hours until Daddy gets home time. Chronos is the hard, slow-passing time we parents often live in. Then there's Kairos time. Kairos is God's time. It's time outside of time. It's metaphysical time. Kairos is those magical moments in which time stands still. I have a few of those moments each day, and I cherish them.”

— Glennon Doyle Melton

“My parents say you're no good, Elijah." I exhaled and killed the cigarette in the grass.
Laughing, Eli's eyes went to my lips and his hands touched my bare midriff. "Really? And what do you say?"
He had brought his lips so close to mine that it became hard to think about my next words when all I wanted to do was crush my mouth to his. I wanted him to completely consume me. "I think you're broken," I finally got out, and Eli arched a brow. "But I think I'm broken too. I just don't know it yet.”

— Nadège Richards

“One ravishing dark-haired beauty wearing leather pants and strategically applied electrical tape, stared hard at me and, when she saw me looking, licked her lips very, very slowly. She trailed a fingertip over her chin, down across her throat, and down over her sternum and gave me a smile so wicked that it's parents should have sent it to military school.”

— Jim Butcher

“No, it really isn't, but trust me, getting divorced and having to start over is the least in life that isn't fair. I had to watch the parents of a way too young girl realize that their daughter died for no other reason than people can't figure out how to be nice to each other. It isn't that hard, just be nice and people might not have to suffer needlessly, but that isn't the world we live in, so young girls die. That isn't fair, Mom. People falling out of love is vicious and it sucks, but there are far worse things you could be going through. I know that sounds harsh but it's very true.”

— Jay Crownover

“My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way.”

— Anne Lamott

“I wish my parents hadn't made me feel that how I looked was linked to how much they loved me. But I do also see how hard it must be to see your child pile on the pounds and trust they'll find their own way back to a healthy weight.”

— Arabella Weir

“I grew up off the grid in Vernon, and I saw my parents work hard every day, as teachers but also while farming and building a log home. So from a young age I knew the value of hard work.”

— Ryan Holmes

“I come from great stock. I didn't come from money. My parents both worked really hard to keep food on the table and give my sister and me opportunities to play sports and see what we were good at.”

— Rickie Fowler

“I'm so blessed to have such enlightened parents. It must have been very hard to watch their able-bodied son lock himself up in his old room for most of his 20s.”

— A. Scott Berg

“My parents are very conservative. They taught me the value of hard work - don't depend on other people, do it yourself.”

— Kyrsten Sinema

“I knew I wanted considerable education so that I wouldn't have to work as hard as my parents.”

— Ferid Murad

“You can't do things unexpected in life if you're not willing to take a risk, and it's easier to risk your own life than it is for your parent to watch you take risks. It's very, very hard for parents to see children doing things that aren't a solid path. I've been through that.”

— Lisa Edelstein

“My parents had always preached the virtues of hard work. But hard work is one thing; economic struggle is another.”

— Sargent Shriver

“Before it was decided that I was going to be adopted, my mother was going to abort me. I was born with tangled legs; they never thought I'd be able to dance ... without knowing it, as a child I overcame a lot thanks to really doting, loving parents and a great family and a hard work ethic on my part.”

— Lindsay Pearce

“When I was a child growing up in Maine, one of my favorite things to do was to look for sand dollars on the seashores of Maine, because my parents told me it would bring me luck. But you know, these shells, they're hard to find. They're covered in sand. They're difficult to see.”

— Sarah Parcak

“I'm just lucky to have great parents. My sister's an actress. My brother's a musician. I found it hard growing up in such a ... creatively driven family. I wanted to have this thing to create, myself.”

— Grace Gummer

“Your young, sitting back thinking about your future, you feel heavily in your heart your desire to create your dream; no matter the tasks set before you. You hold that feeling; close to you, and you age. Your told to grow up, get a job and become successful in ways that will make someone else proud, whilst ignoring the ache inside yourself. Truth is, we're all raised to conform; damn it our parents were raised to conform, but does that mean you have to, too? No, than unravel that long lost dream inside yourself and start to create a life from it, you'll walk alone for a while, you will break down every comfort zone you've ever known; slowly transforming into a being without one, and you know what..? even if it's going to be hard, possibly some of the greatest hurdles of your time; one thing will feel certain- you'll never have felt so empowered in all your life.”

— Nikki Rowe

“Children can be too hard on their parents, until they learn themselves how hard life can be.”

— David Clement-Davies

“My parents were strict and taught me the proper fundamentals that I would use in my life. They taught me commitment to work hard.”

— Billy Casper

“A lot of my stories about the old days, they're delicious and funny. But every time I recall the early days, it's painful. With every anecdote, it's painful because you're summoning up the terribly, terribly difficult life of my parents. And it's painful because I didn't realize at the time how hard it was for them.”

— Mario Cuomo

“Suddenly the light came on at the back of her parents' house, flooding the yard. "Is there somebody out there? Amy, is that you?" her mother called. "No. Tell me this isn't happening." Quinn rested his forehead against hers. "Has she got a wiretap on you or something? I swear, she's like a walking hard-on detector.”

— Sarah Mayberry

“My parents always say I have really good legs. I've worked really hard for them. They always insist that I show my legs.”

— Samaire Armstrong

“I had parents who instilled in me the importance of love, morals and hard work. I give God all the glory because he has brought me through so much.”

— Junior Seau

“I have amazing parents. They had worked hard all their lives for me, and when I started to make money, I wanted to be able to take care of them.”

— Noemie Lenoir

“My parents have always told me to work hard. My father was a friend, a very good friend, but when he needed to be a father, he was.”

— Jeev Milkha Singh

“When I was growing up, my parents always told me that I had to do what I thought was right and not listen to other people. That was hard for me.”

— Hillary Clinton

“My parents never told me to get a real job. They always said, 'Go for it! If this is what you want to do, work hard.' They were always very supportive.”

— Imelda May

“I'm still really close with everyone at home and their parents - and their brothers and sisters. I was so, so, so lucky to grow up as part of a community and I don't take that for granted. I try very hard to stay part of it.”

— Jennifer Garner

“I would argue that education, actual learning - it is hard work. It's very personal. Your parents don't teach you anything. Your teachers don't teach you anything. The government doesn't teach you anything. You read it. You don't understand it; you read it again. You break a pencil and read it again.”

— Dean Kamen

“"You couldn't be more wrong", I said. "You are buying into the cross-stitched sentiments of your parents' throw pillows. You're arguing that the fragile, rare thing is beautiful simply because it is fragile and rare. But that's a lie, and you know it." "You're a hard person to comfort" , Augustus said. "Easy comfort isn't comforting", I said. "You were a rare and fragile flower once. You remember." For a moment he said nothing. "You do know how to shut me up, Hazel Grace." "It's my privilege and responsibility," I answered.”

— John Green

“My parents worked enormously hard to put four children through college. We didn't have a lot of money.”

— Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.

“I was born in 1953, in Paris. But soon after my birth my family (I have one sister) moved into a rent apartment in suburbs of Paris named Romainville. That time my parents were freshly married and it was extremely hard to find an apartment in Paris for a young married couple. To say they found a flat in a blocks of houses which was built after the second World War - and this is the place where I spent my childhood.”

— Richard Clayderman

“My parents always felt if I worked hard enough I could make any dream come true.”

— Derek Jeter

“Teen angst is so boring, isn't it? I try so hard not to be a cliche, but it's like written in my DNA to hate my parents and be totally unsatisfied with everything. I wonder if there's anyone our age who actually likes their life.”

— Amy Reed

“I took to religion at about age 12; it was very hard for me to be Sabbath observant as a kid in a home which was not Sabbath observant. I think my parents thought the whole Jewish thing was a phase.”

— Erica Brown

“[My parents] worked hard all week long, and the way they celebrated and rejoiced in life was by making music on weekends. And that music was Country Music.”

— Rodney Crowell

“Imagine if your success in life is determined only by your guts, your hard work, and your willpower, and not by the wealth of your parents. I think it'll be a much more interesting world. I think this could change the way the planet is run.”

— Andrew Ng

“The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.”

— Benjamin Spock

“I want to be the best role model I can be for my family. I want my husband and I to be the ones our kids look to for guidance, to be the great role models that I had with my parents growing up, so for as hard as we work, I want our kids to see us having fun. I want our kids to know that we have to feel our bodies. And nutrition is a huge part of that.”

— Kerri Walsh

“Part of the American ethos is that you want to leave something better for your kids than you had and I know that my parents felt that way and I know that my grandparents felt that way and everybody worked hard so that their kids had a better chance. I just don't want to be the first generation that doesn't do that.”

— Matt Damon

“There's a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of divorced families. I come from a divorced family. And you have parents meet someone and they have kids and you're with that whole having to meet new people and be your family. That's always a hard thing to do.”

— Selena Gomez

“I've come to realize that making it your life's work to be different than your parents is not only hard to do, it's a dumb idea. Not everything we found fault with was necessarily wrong; we were right, for example, to resent, as kids, being told when to go to bed. We'd be equally wrong, as parents, to let our kids stay up all night. To throw out all the tools of parenting just because our parents used them would be like making yourself speak English without using ten letters of the alphabet; it's hard to do.”

— Paul Reiser

“I've got great genetics from parents, and I'm not moaning that I have such a hard life. Trust me; it's worked out so much more in the positive then the negative.”

— Channing Tatum

“We pray for those who have ceased to pray. We pray for those that need prayer more than ever, that have fewer and fewer seasons even of thought, that grow hard with years, that are less and less troubled by sin, and that are more and more irreverent of religion. We pray for the children of Christian parents who sometimes weep at the memory of father and mother, but who never have thought of God.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

“The legacies that parents and church and teachers left to my generation of Black children were priceless but not material: a living faith reflected in daily service, the discipline of hard work and stick-to-itiveness, and a capacity to struggle in the face of adversity.”

— Marian Wright Edelman