A Quote by Susan Cheever

When Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike, what he meant was that there are no happy families.

Susan Cheever

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Alike Families Happy Meant Tolstoy Wrote

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Susan Cheever
American - Author
Born: July 31, 1943

Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians, and he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the frikkin' booze.

Sherman Alexie

... good teachers, like Tolstoy's happy families, are alike everywhere.

Bel Kaufman

Tolstoy may be right about happy and unhappy families, but in ballet, it works the opposite way: All good ballets are different from each other and all bad ones are alike, at least in one crucial respect - they're all empty.

Robert Gottlieb

I think that maybe happy families don't need stories the way unhappy families need stories. Maybe they're too busy living that they don't actually step back and talk about life like the Anton Chekhov quote. I prefer Anton Chekhov to Lev Tolstoy, and the reason is because of what he leaves out. Sometimes I think Tolstoy had a theory that he was proving and he proved it. Chekhov is more ambiguous.

Peter Orner

In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

Jeanette Winterson

Democrats have always historically referred to our families as working families, and I have sort of changed that moniker. I think what we have is a nation of worried families - families that are concerned about job security, families who thought their pensions were secure and now have questions.

Tom Vilsack

There is no evidence that success in business will make us happy people or allow us to have happy families.

Clayton M. Christensen

How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilized nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy!

Charles Dickens

I relate with military families and Gold Star families. Gold Star families are families where somebody didn't come home. My father died in 1949. He was a flight instructor in the Army Air Corp.

Joe Walsh

Congress has turned its back on America's working families. There are Teamster families in every congressional district in America, and those families vote. Those who would oppose these families have done so at their own political peril.

James P. Hoffa

When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.

Bruce Feiler

I don't believe in happy families.

Pat Conroy

Happy or Unhappy, families are all mysterious.

Gloria Steinem

Society wants happy families.

Katherine Ryan

I just want my daughters and their families to be happy.

Hema Malini

Very much in my books people find not surrogate families because they are real families. We've got families that we're related to by blood but we've also got families that we acquire. And those too I think are pretty much part of my books.

Jackie French

A Quote by Susan Cheever

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