A Quote by Elizabeth McCracken

All I can say is, it's a sort of kinship, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch, the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of the sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins.

Elizabeth McCracken

Quote Topics

Beloved Branch Children Cousins Discover Family Grief Happens Ill Kinship Lost Lost Child Mentally Mentally Ill New Parents People Relatives Say Set Shorthand Something Sort Speak Sudden Terrible Though Tree Whom

Quote Author

Elizabeth McCracken
American - Author
Born: 1966

We also had a beautiful feature where the writer used the story of two mentally ill relatives, one of whom killed his dad, to explore the history of how we deinstitutionalized the mentally ill, only to re-institutionalize them - but in jails and prisons. There's much more to come.

Clara Jeffery

The seed of a tree has the nature of a branch or twig or bud. It is a part of the tree, but if separated and set in the earth to be better nourished, the embryo or young tree contained in it takes root and grows into a new tree.

Isaac Newton

No matter how you feel about your extended family or family gatherings you will be attending. This is because now the ultimate reason for attending family gatherings is for your children to have the time of their lives with their cousins. Little kids love their cousins. I’m not being cute or exaggerating here. Cousins are like celebrities for little kids. If little kids had a People magazine, cousins would be on the cover. Cousins are the barometers of how fun a family get-together will be. “Are the cousins going to be there? Fun!

Jim Gaffigan

I lost relatives to AIDS. A couple of my closest cousins, favorite cousins. I lost friends to AIDS, high school friends who never even made it to their 21st birthdays in the '80s. When it's that close to you, you can't - you know, you can't really deny it, and you can't run from it.

Queen Latifah

Because we had no other relatives living in the U.K., me, my parents and my siblings continuously journeyed abroad to bond with our extended family.

Anton du Beke

Parents are the most likely to be victims of the violence of their mentally ill children.

Rich Lowry

My parents separated before I was born, but they remained friends, so I was close to both sides of my family, with siblings and cousins and godparents. I've had the same best friend since grade six.

Winnie Harlow

My mother's family didn't speak much about Europe: My mother was born in 1935, and her new-world parents were the sort who didn't want to worry their children about the war.

Elizabeth McCracken

You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.

Woody Allen

Siblings: children of the same parents, each of whom is perfectly normal until they get together.

Sam Levenson

Baptize first the children; and if they can speak for themselves, let them do so. Otherwise, let their parents or other relatives speak for them.

Hippolytus of Rome

After that I couldn't show my face outside. I lost my identity and balance. I was still living with my parents, and they were my only friends. For so many people, this thing with the nurse was confirmation that I must be mad or mentally ill.

Mathias Rust

I think you get mentally ill being homeless. Most of the bag ladies wind up mentally ill pretty quickly - what people would call paranoid - because they are in such danger. I don't know if it's really paranoia because they are in great danger. Terrible things happen to them, and they lose everything. How could they not become at the very least severely depressed?

Alix Kates Shulman

I feel a kinship to the idea of beloved stories and beloved pieces of art that we can imagine in different ways and sort of take a meta approach in terms of what those stories offer us.