Top 100 Family Stories Quotes
#1. Stories
individual stories, family stories, national stories
are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.
Yann Martel
#2. I'm known for impressions and family stories.
Jay Pharoah
#3. Hat the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we lived. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.
Ellen Goodman
#4. I wanted to put all my family stories down for my girls, and I remember everything so vividly. I just wanted to put everything down while I still can remember it all.
Sissy Spacek
#5. I always loved the verve and vivacity of pulp and I kind of merged it with my own interest in family stories.
Daniel Woodrell
#6. All family stories are important, just as all people are important, and they deserve to be passed along.
Karen Chamberlain
#7. But marrying within one's own family can get monotonous. One has heard all the same family stories, knows all the jokes and all the same recipes. No novelty.
Margaret George
#8. There was an especially deep bond between the eldest and the youngest. Enza and Stella were the beginning and end, the alpha and omega, the bookends that held all the family stories from start to finish as well as the various shades and hues of personality and temperament.
Adriana Trigiani
#9. More often than not, family stories turn out to be etched in sand rather than granite. Even the parts we think are true - even the parts about ourselves - crumble
Diane Chamberlain
#10. Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.
Erica Jong
#11. These secrets came down my own ornately curved and twisting family line. For family stories are never as direct as history books, and therefore they are more true.
Liz Rosenberg
#12. My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in 'The Lemon Orchard.'
Luanne Rice
#13. My appearances are almost theatrical performances. I bring items for the children to see, such as photographs and actual piece of meteorite, a family quilt, sometimes spectacles, sometimes clothing, so that they can understand what I write about is family stories based in fact.
Patricia Polacco
#14. For someone like me who's lived in the same place her whole life - I mean, I lived three blocks from where I was born, and I met my future husband in the eighth grade - there are always family stories and legends passed down.
Susan Straight
#15. I think that my films are basically family stories, beyond the fact that they are global and have political and social commentary.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#16. We also learned our own history and I was so grateful that such richness comes from our family stories. Now we will forever remember the day that a Russian cellist spoke the heart of Czech people. Rostropovich loved Prague and so he viewed that performance as a personal tragedy.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek
#18. My friends and family have always been extremely supportive, but the support I've received from fans has been so overwhelming. I love hearing all of their 'Fight Song' stories; I have been so inspired by so many of them.
Rachel Platten
#19. I'm probably the most loquacious author when it comes to my dedications. The reason is there is some symbolism there. I've been writing these books, bringing these stories to my readers who I love so much, and I have a greater love for my family.
Karen Kingsbury
#20. Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.
Gore Vidal
#21. My family, they're story tellers. My mom is Irish, and my dad is Italian. In my family, we weren't allowed to watch TV while we ate - we had to sit around the table and tell stories about our day.
Meg Cabot
#22. Each of us has a family tree full of stories inside of us, Dirk thought. Each of us has a story blossoming out of us.
Francesca Lia Block
#23. My aunts told wonderful stories. Not to me, but to each other. We had a very strong family. My mother's sisters loved each other intensely. The uncles loved each other intensely.
Barry Hannah
#24. Because deep down you know that someone needs to keep you out of trouble.
Mike L. Hopper
#25. A community, a family, is a group of people who share common stories. The health of any community depends directly on the health of the stories the community embraces.
Daniel Taylor
#26. AP promoted me to the White House beat because I knew Clinton, his family, friends, and staff better than anybody in the national press corps. Those contacts helped me break a few stories and get my career in Washington jump-started.
Ron Fournier
#27. Reading with my children is incredibly important to me and a wonderful way to spend time together as a family, exploring magical worlds through books and stories.
Frank Lampard
#28. I don't want to be embarrassed when I go to see something on the screen. I don't want to listen to foul language, watch a lot of violence or see something immoral. I prefer stories with sensitivity and family values; films that strive to lift you up to a higher place in life.
Debra Paget
#29. If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
Madeleine L'Engle
#30. Hey everyone. This is Elizabeth Stone, the one who wrote a A BOY I ONCE KNEW and BLACK SHEEP AND KISSING COUSINS. To those of you who read either one, thanks! But another Elizabeth Stone, not me, wrote WOMEN AND THE CUBAN REVOLUTION and VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. Just setting the record straight!
Elizabeth Stone
#31. Delicacy - a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Family-circle narratives & obscene stories.
Mark Twain
#32. We all know far too many stories where the third generation just destroys everything that the first two have built up, and I certainly hope my family are different because I've worked too hard and my father has worked too hard for it to be given away.
Gina Rinehart
#33. Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start.
Robert Morgan
#34. Many people have said to me, "What a pity you had such a big family to raise." "Think of the novels and the short stories and the poems you never had time to write because of that." And I looked at my children and I said, "These are my poems, these are my stories."
Olga Masters
#35. If you are far away from your lover and family, if you have lost someone, if you feel a bit displaced in your own life: these stories are for you.
Audrey Niffenegger
#36. Aw honey. Today's as important as forever." Grandpa Joe in "Shave and a Haircut" Flash Warden and Other Stories
Eileen Granfors
#37. My grandma loved to be on stage entertaining people. She loves to make people smile and laugh. She loves to brighten other people's day. She often calls perfect strangers her angel, as a way of witnessing, but also to encourage and build their self-esteem.
Lisa Bedrick
#38. I live for my work, apart from my family who come first. And I live to tell stories and pretend to be other people, it's something I've been doing since I was 3 years old. Maybe it's because I'm intrinsically bored with myself, and I find other people more interesting.
Jacki Weaver
#39. Christmas was always a big holiday in our family. Every Christmas Eve before we'd go to bed, my mom and dad would read to us two or three stories and they would always be 'The Happy Prince,' 'The Gift of the Magi' and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas,' and I would like to keep that alive.
Cameron Mathison
#40. My family moved to the Philippines when I was 14. While living there, I learned that my mom grew up very poor. Seeing that kind of abject poverty firsthand during my travels deeply shaped my life. Seeing those living conditions motivated me to want to tell inspiring stories of struggle and triumph.
Manny Pacquiao
#41. Nothing is sadder than a child burdened by reality, after all. Those stories were our family fairy tales.
Veronica Montes
#42. I was struck by the image of Daddy still dressed in that same plaid shirt and undershirt with the bloodstains below the neck, the one I had first seen him wearing in the jail the previous day.
Earl B. Russell
#43. We need to take time to connect with the poor, resist our unceasing cravings, and pray. But we also need to gather with friends and family, share in God's good provision, eat delicious food, tell stories that encourage us all, and celebrate the risen Lord.
Chris Seay
#44. My family of friends has kept me alive through lovers who have left, enterprises that have failed, and all too many stories that never got finished. That family has been part of remaking the world for me.
Dorothy Allison
#45. That's how we all are, too hard for what we should be. We should be a family, not soldiers. But all that really connects us is stories, and memories, of what should be.
Sara Raasch
#46. I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.
Patrick DeWitt
#47. I grew up in a family where the love of stories is very strong. And there's also a love of performance. I think one reason stories were so important in my family was that we moved around a lot.
Ann-Marie MacDonald
#48. I am a storyteller, and I grew up with a father who told big-fish stories, so storytelling is very much a part of me. It was a part of my family.
Susan Stroman
#49. For the past few years my fans have made it very clear that they would like to read my novels and revisit my family of characters faster than I can write them. For them, I am willing to make a change to my working methods so the stories in my head can reach the page more frequently.
Wilbur Smith
#50. I worked, and I was excited about the next time the five of us had a joint class.
When that time came, Silvia started by asking us what we were passionate about. I scribbled down my family, music, and then, as if the word demanded to be written, justice.
Kiera Cass
#51. I didn't want to travel. I didn't want to leave my family. I heard all these stories from Dad about not having Edward around when he was young, and I didn't want that to happen.
Kim Weston
#52. Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable - the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#53. Everything Sholom Aleichem talks about in his plays and his short stories is about people, family, man's relationship with his God, the breaking down of tradition.
Norman Jewison
#54. I'm a veteran, and I come from a family of veterans and people who served in that war. And the stories that I heard were a hell of a lot different than the movies that I was seeing, so I wanted to make a movie about the people that were really there.
David Ayer
#55. People think they have a perfect idea of who you are from a four-second Snapchat video ... and fake blogs, stories, magazine covers. In reality, that's not the case. Nobody knows who I am except family and my close friends.
Kylie Jenner
#56. An old maid, that's what I'm to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps ...
Louisa May Alcott
#57. There isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money. People and their relationship to each other is the blood, the family. And how they live, the money of it.
Grace Paley
#58. I realized that this story [Shelter] is all about family, family loss, and how it influences you day to day life.
Paul Bettany
#59. I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful. I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs.
John Irving
#60. I'm interested in human behavior, and what happened in my family life is definitely not a unique story. There are aspects of that I'm sure you can see through the work. But I'm just looking for something that touches me.
Charlize Theron
#61. What I do with everything is take things out of real life. You encounter all sorts of stories. It's a lot of your friends and family, sometimes there's quite sad episodes in their life and everything. So just little things I've picked up along the years always find a way into all of my stories.
Mark Millar
#62. I sometimes find that my family's emphasis on stories, characters, and art that appeals directly to children rather than over their heads to adults is not fully appreciated by parents who may have more narrowly adult concerns and agendas.
Mike Berenstain
#63. Dominion is a spy novel, a love story, and also I hope gives some sense of the difficulties faced by dissidents under any totalitarian regime: the threat of imprisonment, torture and death; the threat to one's family, the terror of being alone in a hostile world.
C.J. Sansom
#64. Every articulate family ... generates its own stories, explanations and myths to illuminate the differences in temperament and talent among its children, the lines of allegiance and influence between parent and child.
Elizabeth Fishel
#65. My family were great story-tellers. My mum was one of 12 and they were all fighting to tell stories. You have to tell a good tale or no one is going to listen. You have to make it entertaining and interesting. That's how I learned to tell stories.
Denise Mina
#66. The book came after the fall of the Taliban, it says something about Afghan family life. Those kind of stories - what happens behind the scenes on a TV screen - are important.
Asne Seierstad
#67. My true inspirations are my kids and my husband. I'm also inspired by stories of my extended family, friends, and even strangers who cause me to look at my life and behavior and encourage me to be the best person, mother, daughter, and friend that I can be.
Trista Sutter
#68. Our family. We were like four figures in a mobile above a child's crib: We danced and turned alone in our stories, but we were all connected, and the tossing and flailing of one affected us all.
Libby Cataldi
#69. The tatters of old stories are tangled, weathered, muted by long-held silences that succeeded loud feuds, and sometimes no doubt re-dyed a more flattering color.
Sonia Sotomayor
#70. I come from a family of Cherokee master storytellers. Listening to stories, reading them, and creating new tales is my life. These tales reveal the beauty and mystery of people's culture and beliefs.
Louise Ann Barton
#71. I grew up in a family of storytellers, but Google has destroyed us because you can fact-check everything. We'd always like the stories to be a little better than they were.
George Clooney
#72. My mother, as a girl, had remembered this woman from Maine, someone who was part of the extended family somehow, and I recall her talking about this great, risk-taking woman. There are the most amazing, heroic stories in everybody's lives.
Patricia MacLachlan
#73. 'Fall on Your Knees' is really a story about secrets and family, and the idea that there are some stories or truths that need to be expressed.
Ann-Marie MacDonald
#74. Either way, the thought of entire lives lost - family celebrations, Christmases and birthdays, love affairs and bedtime stories, weddings and high school graduations - because of a misfire or unexplained chaos inside a person's brain, made her chest constrict. It wasn't fair.
Ellen Marie Wiseman
#75. Danny couldn't remember how many times he had driven down this particular stretch of highway.
Mike Mehalek
#76. A sweet kiss on her head made her little heart swell; she had pancakes, her dog. She had love. All was well.
Renata Bowers
#77. My family were Russian Jews. They got you to read as soon as you could. And then assumed you would read a lot. People didn't really tell stories but they were good talkers. That's important for a writer, to hear speakers.
Grace Paley
#78. My greatest interest in it was certainly not to avoid those things that were going to be controversial about the family but the interest I had in the story was predominantly what he was pursuing and not as much what he was fleeing.
Sean Penn
#79. We're supposed to take our problems to a family adviser. Personally, I've never met a family adviser. They're all off somewhere listening to dirty stories.
Robert Orben
#80. Bill and Hillary will spend Easter with her brothers Hugh and Tony and Roger Clinton. They have a family ritual at all holiday dinners. After they sit down, they hold hands, close their eyes, and get their stories straight.
Argus Hamilton
#82. I was weaned not on television or Wild West sagas but on stories of nationalism and patriotism. I would sit at my mother's feet by the hour and drink in these exciting tales of the freedom fighters in our family.
Sukarno
#83. I do think it's important for black writers to show that we too can make it into the mainstream. Growing up, I didn't just watch The Cosby Show, I watched Growing Pains and Family Ties too. We can tell those stories too.
Lena Waithe
#84. Our family's special holiday tradition is going over to my grandparent's house on Christmas morning. My grandma cooks a big breakfast, and I love hearing her tell old funny stories.
Caroline Sunshine
#85. Dear family,
I am drafting a new laundry protocol for better and more considerate usage of the washing machine
Koh Choon Hwee
#86. I actually have a life I said I wanted to have. I wanted to tell stories I want and be with my family. I'm whispering it, because I'm a quarter Jewish and afraid it's all going to be taken away.
Helen Hunt
#87. I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for
so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house?
Ursula K. Le Guin
#88. It's important to teach our children their heritage. Who are your ancestors? What were their traditions? Each of us has a story to tell. If these stories are unwritten, then how are your children going to know of their parentage?
Linda Weaver Clarke
#89. I have fallen in love with the stories of our lives, our everyday mythologies. How will they unfold? What will become of us?
D.J. MacLennan
#90. The thing that grounds you, and the thing that really gives you a sense of wholeness, is your family, friends and your community. Those are the things that can mirror back to you what you're experiencing, and can affirm to you that the stories you are telling are true.
Dan Chaon
#92. Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.
Salman Rushdie
#93. I've never been comfortable with the idea of using family and friends in stories. Which is why it takes me longer than something else. Because you make them up out of nothing. Doing that is harder.
Edward P. Jones
#94. These stories depressed me. Love ruined people's lives, the way our parents said drugs could.
Mona Simpson
#95. In many ways my life has been rather like a record of the lost and found. Perhaps all lives are like that.
Lucy Foley
#96. The stories in 'Jim the Boy' are either made up or appropriated from some source other than my family. But the idea of a family telling stories to the kid, often to impart some kind of lesson, that's very familiar, and that's the way that I grew up.
Tony Earley
#97. All of us in the Ball family in South Carolina, from the time we're children, hear stories about our ancestors, the slave owners.
Edward Ball
#98. Stories never live alone; They are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward.
Roberto Calasso
#99. The rain still drummed on the roof, like fine needles striking the shingles. The family sat silently around the table, each one wrapped in their own thoughts.
It was Matthew's voice that broke the silence, asking, "And what happened after that?"
"After that," said Paul, "came Gettysburg.
Elisabeth Grace Foley
#100. The women in my family were hardworking matriarchs. But the stories I saw on TV and movies and even in many books said they were anomalies
Kameron Hurley
