parents

This is for the kids who know that the worst kind of fear isn't the thing that makes you scream, but the one that steals your voice and keeps you silent.

The inspector had interviewed boys before, boys from the poorest parts of town. He had the habit of not specifying "mam" or "dad" or even "parents." They were things he knew not every child possessed and so he was careful.

Yeah, my parents are crappy, but you hurt either of my sisters and I will spend my life finding ways to destroy you.

The sacred gift of parenthood is inscribe in the universal words __apa_ and __ama_.

The biggest mistake that parents make, is believing that their assigned task in life is to teach their children and to guide them in every situation of their children's lives. The truth is that it is the task of parents to both learn from their children and to guide them as well. Parenting is a relationship that goes both ways, from the moment your child is born, you learn from that person, and in fact, your lessons begin long before your child's lessons do. Later on, when you've learned a great deal already, then they begin to learn from you. Throughout our lives, it is a give-and-take relationship, in many ways. Our assigned task is to learn from our children, and to guide and teach them. Their assigned task is to learn from us, and also to teach us.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad', and if you're planning on writing that's probably a good thing. But if you are planning on writing and they haven't fucked you up, well, you've got nothing to go on, so then they've fucked you up good and proper.

...parents everywhere desire a better life for their children. It's a near constant: They understand the importance of education and crave it for their children, even as they are well aware of the sacrifice they will have to make.

Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren__ for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.

All our lives my brother and I were caught by the fictions my parents told us__ictions about themselves as well as others. Each wanted us to judge the other in his or her favor. Sometimes I felt cheated, as if they never allowed us to have a story of our own. It is only now that I understand how much their story was also mine.

I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't.But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.

I know that my grandmother certainly did nothing to warrant my mother stealing all of her jewelry that my grandfather had given her as gifts over the years, just so she could peddle it for heroin on the street. Those were precious metals and gems that could never be replaced, and each one had a story behind it. A love story between my grandparents, that my mother flushed down a proverbial toilet so that she could shoot up, throw up and pass out.

In some ways, forcing me to leave was the best thing that could have happened to me. In other ways, it was a disaster. I'm still glad they did it though, because I think I might have just died if I had stayed at the coast. Although I ended up there a couple years later, when my mother relapsed on a whim, I think I needed that two years away from that horrible little coastal town where time is frozen and ideas creep forward too slow to notice any progress.

My mother was obviously never there to take the blame she deserved. She left me to absorb it all in her place. She was far too busy in her own world, that incidentally revolved around herself. I'm pretty sure she dated a new guy every few months for most of my childhood. Some would last longer and show up again later after disappearing for a while, like the last day of a cold or flu before you start feeling better.

We never expressed this to each other in Chinese, because it wasn__ something said in Chinese culture; the emotions were too strong, the words too coarse, and besides, it was assumed that parents and children loved each other.

If a father does not altogether embrace a life of uncompromised sacrifice as the core of all principles by which he nurtures his children, he is a father by birth only and no power on earth can ever or will ever make that sufficient.

But yeah, like everyone else in our family, they could go from zero to murderous in a fucking heartbeat.

When a child reaches adolescence, there is very apt to be a conflict between parents and child, since the latter considers himself to be by now quite capable of managing his own affairs, while the former are filled with parental solicitude, which is often a disguise for love of power. Parents consider, usually, that the various moral problems which arise in adolescence are peculiarly their province. The opinions they express, however, are so dogmatic that the young seldom confide in them, and usually go their own way in secret.

I can be anything I want to be. Just wait and you will see. Only time will tell what I will be.