“A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.”

“Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.”

“Family’s the luck of the draw, Lena. What you make of yourself, because of or despite it, that’s where the spine and hea...”

“A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.”

“A man's immortality can be found in his children.”

“… I suppose that it is not so easy to go home and it takes a bit of time to make a son out of a stranger.”

“The Lord gives a good many things twice over, but he don't give ye a mother but once.”

“The family is the first essential cell of human society.”

“A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.”

“There’s nothing that makes you more insane than family. Or more happy. Or more exasperated. Or more . . . secure.”

“A man who has been the indisputable favourite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.”

“[Families] are made to make you forget yourself occasionally so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed.”