Quotes About Parents

“When the child separates from its parents to explore the new world, the parents can do one of two things. They can fight it with rules, pleading, tears and anger: 'Why do you want to go out in minus-fifteen-degree temperatures in that T-shirt when you could wear the wool I've warmed for you over the woodstove? It's so cosy.' Or they can admit the new world exists, dangerous and irresistible. Cosy is not what awakening youth wants Safety is not what it wants.”

— Kathleen Winter

“I guess there's a Use By date when it comes to blaming your parents for how messed up you are.”

— Nathan Filer

“We had the schools we wanted, in a way. Parents did not tend to show up at schools demanding that their kids be assigned more challenging reading or that their kindergarteners learn math while they still loved numbers. They did show up to complain about bad grades, however. And they came in droves, with video cameras and lawn chairs and full hearts, to watch their children play sports.”

— Amanda Ripley

“When you lose your parents, the sadness doesn't go away. It just changes. It hits you sideways sometimes instead of head-on. Like now.”

— Jude Watson

“In those years I did not care to enjoy sex, only to have it. That is what seeing Alex again on Fifth Avenue brought back to me - a youth of fascinated, passionless copulation. There they are, figures in a discoloured blur, young men and not so young, the nice ones with automobiles, the dull ones full of suspicions and stinginess. By asking a thousand questions of many heavy souls, I did not learn much. You receive biographies interesting mainly for their coherence. So many are children who from the day of their birth are growing up to be their parents. Look at the voting records, inherited like flat feet.”

— Elizabeth Hardwick

“I think I had really good parents. I got really lucky. They said, 'You're a woman; enjoy yourself and believe that you can do things.'”

— Emily Ratajkowski

“People ask if my parents are hippies, but they're actually very conservative. A girl called Rebel sang at their wedding, and that's where my name came from.”

— Rebel Wilson

“It's somewhat disquieting that the same parents and educators who are horrified by the notion of child soldiers have bestowed upon 'The Hunger Games' a double mantle of critical praise and global bestsellerdom.”

— Kenneth Oppel

“My parents tried to shield me from how famous they were when I was growing up on Long Island. I had no idea.”

— Alexa Ray Joel

“The United Nations Children's Fund reports that more than 18 million children worldwide have lost both parents to the ravages of AIDS, starvation, war or natural disasters.”

— Foster Friess

“My parents didn't go to university and weren't brought up in England. They hadn't heard of any other universities other than 'Cambridge' or 'Oxford.'”

— Richard Ayoade

“For whatever reason, I didn't succumb to the stereotype that science wasn't for girls. I got encouragement from my parents. I never ran into a teacher or a counselor who told me that science was for boys. A lot of my friends did.”

— Sally Ride

“My parents were married 53 years, good and bad. Can I do that? Probably not. But I really hope I can.”

— Scott Baio

“I know it sounds really weedy, but we are all children who seek approval from our parents.”

— Gurinder Chadha

“After Yale Law School, I was proud to try to live up to my parents' example and began my career working for The Urban Justice Center in the streets of Newark, organizing residents to fight for better housing conditions.”

— Cory Booker

“I would love to have a complete family. I'd love to do it all at once. I'd love to be able to give to my children what my parents were able to give to me. And if I'm blessed to be able to do that, fantastic. If I'm not, then life goes on. You have to do the best you can. I do think we have to bring the family back; I do.”

— Michael Ealy

“My parents are really funny. Laughter was a big part of my childhood. Of course, they tell a lot of bad jokes - but so do I. I tell a lot of bad jokes.”

— Cecily Strong

“I grew up in New York City, and both my parents worked. On weekends, we'd go out to the country, and on Sunday nights we'd come back. Sometimes we were a little cranky - it was a long drive. But we could always look forward to one thing: my mother's ziti and meat sauce.”

— Christa Miller

“I'd been raised by my parents to believe barfing your feelings on other people was the height of impoliteness ...”

— Stephen King

“It's as if God gave you something-all those stories- and said, "Here you are. Try not to lose it." But children lose everything unless somebody is there to help them, and if your parents are too stupid to do it, maybe i ought to.”

— Stephen King

“I never had any question that my parents loved me. I had a real sense of self confidence.”

— Jeannette Walls

“A lot of teenagers have parents that are maybe a little too real with them.”

— Jennifer Damiano

“I was really blessed with parents who never said I couldn't do anything. And now I reflect as an adult on that, 'Wow, they never told me no!'”

— Olesya Rulin

“Sam pushed open the door without waiting for my answer. A wonderful wave of new-book smell came rushing out, reminding me immediately of Christmas. My parents always got me books for Christmas. With a melodic ding, the shop door swung shut behind us, and Sam released my hand. Where to? I'll buy you a book. I know you want one.”

— Maggie Stiefvater

“You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their heads. I've always thought
put together all those random pieces form everyone who's ever known you from your parents to the guy who once sat next to you on a bus, and you'd probably see a fuller version of your life than you even did while living it.”

— Deb Caletti

“If I have any complaints about my youth ... one is that many well-meaning adults lied to me. Not spiteful lies with malicious intent but lies designed to prevent emotional and psychological pain - lies told by the people who cared about me most: my parents, teachers, relatives.”

— Chris Crutcher

“What do your parents know, about surviving?”

— Lemony Snicket

“I had such a normal and amazing childhood. I've been so lucky. My parents are cool and normal. They don't talk about the business, and I still have stuff to do at their house.”

— Kaley Cuoco

“When I was young, I would make my parents breakfast in bed on Saturday mornings.”

— Tom Douglas

“There was something I wanted, something I envisioned, loving parents, a happy home with everyone smiling at me. A home that no one would ever want to leave, a warm place , a warm person. It exists, I know it does”

— Natsuki Takaya

“My mother read that parents should spend quality time with their children. One way is to sign up for organized activities together. This month we're taking meditation to free the mind. Last month it was Rolfing. Have you ever Rolfed, Tone?"
"Only after the school's shepherd's pie," I said.”

— Julie Anne Peters

“After my parents divorced, my father remarried and my brothers were born when I was twelve and sixteen. I was thunderstruck at these kids. The "baby-ness" of them. Their toes. I had never been around babies before.”

— Leigh Newman

“If you're going to have childhood dreams you should have great parents who let you pursue them and express your creativity”

— Randy Pausch

“The next day at breakfast he asked his mother: Am I ugly? She sighed. Well, hijo, you certainly don't take after me. Dominican parents! You got to love them!”

— Junot Díaz

“I had been brought up in an elementary school where, my first few grades, I remember being specifically told that my teachers were gay. I was just that age and that was just how it was, and my parents were very ... You know, that's how I was raised. Like super-progressive.”

— Jake Gyllenhaal

“Are modern children going to revolt against being modern, and if so, what form will reaction of modern parents take?”

— E.M. Delafield

“Throughout my childhood, my parents dropped me off at a multitude of therapists' offices in hopes that I'd avoid growing up to be the kind of asshole who writes books about them. Also because it was sometimes easier than finding a nanny.”

— Jenny Mollen

“Parents sometimes think of newborns as helpless creatures, but in fact parents' behavior is much more under the infant's control than the reverse. Does he come running when you cry?”

— Sandra Scarr

“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

“So, to get to play somebody who was insisting on it, in spite of all the evidence was very liberating and exciting. It went quite deep. I suppose I reference a kindness and humility that I would have seen in my parents' generation, a little bit more than now.”

— Brendan Gleeson

“There is no relation more intimately personal than that of parents to the child they have brought into the world; and there is therefore no relationship in which the community should be slower to interfere.”

— Suzanne La Follette

“If advertising has invaded the judgment of children, it has also forced its way into the family, an insolent usurper of parental function, degrading parents to mere intermediaries between their children and the market. This indeed is a social revoluation in our time!”

— Jules Henry

“There's a moment in time where kids really don't want to hear anything from their parents.”

— Kevin Costner

“My parents ingrained in me early on that the perfect score is always something to strive for. I want to win and I want to succeed no matter what.”

— Andrea Jung

“We will all be far better spouses, parents, and leaders as we take time to grow in prayer.”

— Mike Bickle

“I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.”

— Bertrand Russell

“I get so sick and tired of hearing people gripe about what their parents did to them. You know what your parents did to you? The best thing they could do. The best thing they knew how, the only thing in many cases that they knew how. Nobody has set out maliciously to hurt their child, unless they were psychotic.”

— Leo Buscaglia

“If my parents had made love a tenth of a second earlier or later, I wouldn't exist. What an enormous miracle, just being given life.”

— Warren Farrell

“In the happiest of our childhood memories, our parents were happy, too.”

— Robert Breault

“During the sixties, all the risk-type sports were very popular, because everybody was rebelling against their parents, or rebelling against the whole system. But those days are over. This is the day of conservatism.”

— Yvon Chouinard