
“Chapter books were my salvation, in the same way as Jesus was for other kids. Our family was always broke, but my parents always shelled out our version of a monthly bar bill for Scholastic paperbacks. Thank you, Astrid Lindgren; when you gave us Pippi Longstocking, you gave me life. I read the book like I read the first issue of Ms. magazine ten years later. The experience was like Helen Keller breaking the code for the word ‘water.’ I wanted to race around spreading the good news. I could breathe again, forever. There was going to be a spot for me in this joint, the earth, after all. It was never going to be a great match for someone as bright and strange as me, but books were going to make it survivable.”
Anne Lamott
more infosource: “The Prayer of an Unconventional Family,” Opinionator, New York Times, November 17, 2012.
category: book, family, reading, religion, survival
medium: Essay
via: Beddy Piekiel“I had a brother who was my savior, made my childhood bearable. He was older by five years, Jack Sendak. He wrote a number of books. He was very, very, very gifted. More importantly to my life, he saved my life. He drew me away from the lack of comprehension that existed between me and my parents, and he took his time with me to draw pictures and read stories and live a kind of fantastical life.”
Maurice Sendak
more infosource: “The Pig Wants to Party: Maurice Sendak’s Latest,” Fresh Air with Terry Gross, NPR, September 20, 2011. Transcript here.
category: brother, childhood, creativity, family, fantasy, sibling
medium: Interview
“Bands, especially when they’re good ones, can be like families, but unlike biological families—at least unlike my biological family—people in my band listen to each other.”
Marc Ribot
more infosource: Marc Ribot interview with Bill Frisell, BOMB magazine , Issue 79, Spring 2002.
category: band, family, listen, music
medium: Interview
“Into the little port you cannot sail unwelcome at any hour of day or night.”
Emily Dickinson
more infosource: Autumn 1869 letter to Louisa and Frances Norcross, Dickinson’s first cousins, in Letters: Emily Dickinson, selected and ed. by Emily Fragos (New York: Everyman’s Library, 2011), 55.
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category: family, friendship, love, port, sea
medium: Letter
“Family is like water—it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.”
Colum McCann
more infosource: Let the Great World Spin (New York: Random House, 2010), 57.
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category: family, memory, stream, water
medium: fiction
“Events are not what make up family life. Family life exists in the nonevents: the meals, the arguments, the reading together, the backyard soccer, the getting ready for school. We hid alone together on our mountain and reveled in the nonevents.”
Claire Dederer
more infosource: Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 288.
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category: family
medium: Memoir
“Does Palin really think the average housewife in Ohio who can’t pay her bills is going to load up on ammo, board two different planes, camp out for two nights with a film crew and shoot a caribou so she can feed her family organic food?”
Maureen Dowd
more infosource: “Pass the Caribou Stew,” The New York Times, December 7, 2010.
category: caribou, family, food, hunt, organic, Sarah Palin
medium: Op-Ed
“I am from a family of artists. Here I am, making a living in the arts. It has not been a rebellion. It’s as though I had taken over the family Esso station.”
Kurt Vonnegut
more infosource: A Man Without a Country (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 14.
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category: art, artist, family, gas station
medium: nonfiction
“My relatives say that they are glad I’m rich, but that they simply cannot read me.”
Kurt Vonnegut
more infosource: The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 163.
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category: family, read, relative, rich, wealth
medium: interview
notes: Originally published in Issue 69 of The Paris Review, 1977.
“If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.”
Clayton M. Christensen
more infosource: “How Will You Measure Your Life?,” Harvard Business Review, July 1, 2010.
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category: child, confidence, family, parenting, self-esteem
medium: magazine article
via: Christina Lowery“It’s not enough to make time for your children. There are certain stages in their lives when you have to give them the time when they want it. You can’t run your family like a company. It doesn’t work.”
Andrew Grove
more infosource: What I’ve Learned: Andy Grove,” by Mike Sager, Esquire, May 1, 2000.
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category: child, family, parenting
medium: interview
“As a kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation.”
Kurt Vonnegut
more infosource: A Man Without a Country (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 1.
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category: birth order, child, family, humor
medium: nonfiction


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