We're learning how important it is both to preserve sibling relationships if they work and repair them if they're broken. We're also learning a lot about nonliteral siblings - stepsiblings, half-siblings - and the surprising power they can have.
When I watch my kids, and I see the primal level at which the sibling relationships are formed, then I completely understand what these unresolved adult sibling problems are based on. You know, 'Mom liked you better' and, 'You got your own room and I didn't.'
Relationships with parents, grandparents, friends, and siblings were important to me when I was young and have remained so throughout my life. Our relationships with other people both shape and reflect who we are. These relationships are infinitely fascinating to explore!
I think in modern communication studies, we put a lot of emphasis on our relationships and our family relationships. Our relationships with our parents, and our siblings. I felt that there was this gap in content about communication with people who are super close to you in your peer group.
Sibling relationships are complicated. All family relationships are. Look at Hamlet.
In a lot of relationships, when you're an adult, you realize that you've actually just been repeating a pattern. When someone breaks that pattern and it makes you realize what's right or wrong about the person. When you actually have to confront it, that's probably why a lot of adult relationships don't survive.
Politics is a matter of human transaction. I consider absolutely everything political, because all fiction involves relationships between people, and relationships between people always include matters of power, of equity, of communication.
It can be the best of relationships and the worst of relationships - often at the same time. The bond between a mother and daughter is one of the strongest, but it's also among the most complicated.
The counter-argument would be, so what if my sexual relationships are superficial, one can still have satisfying and rewarding relationships with friends, or parents, or siblings, or whatever.
We really spend a lot of time on building relationships. And so when everyone is like, 'How do you break so many stories?' it's because I build relationships. I do it the old-fashioned way, and I build sourcing relationships, and then I take advantage of those relationships over time.
In Hollywood most of the films we see are all about the relationships between lovers, but as massively important as that is in someone's life, my relationships with women have always been really dramatic and powerful.
Relationships between governments are important, but relationships between people are the real foundation of mutual understanding.
Teenagers' relationships with their parents often aren't really explored in much depth, but at that age, it's your primary relationship; they're the people you live with.
Certainly, people can get along without siblings. Single children do, and there are people who have irreparably estranged relationships with their siblings who live full and satisfying lives, but to have siblings and not make the most of that resource is squandering one of the greatest interpersonal resources you'll ever have.
I like to read fiction, and I particularly enjoy reading young adult fiction. But I also read children's books, adult books, current authors, and classics, but I like fiction the most.
When you talk to people about the books that have meant a lot to them, it's usually books they read when they were younger because the books have this wonder in everyday things that isn't bogged down by excessively grown-up concerns or the need to be subtle or coy... when you read these books as an adult, it tends to bring back the sense of newness and discovery that I tend not to get from adult fiction.