John Bradshaw Quotes

Of course, screwed up families are not the exclusive province of the famous. Still, most families get to screw up in private.

I think every family is dysfunctional, and some manage to control it better than others.

One trait of addictive families is that we never recognize our own addictions.

Good families are generally worse than any others.

Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.

There's no shortage of orphans in 19th-century literature, but it's hard to find a single happy, communicative, functional parental relationship in the whole of 'Great Expectations,' even among the minor characters.

I feel very, very lucky to have come from the family I did. We have our dysfunctions and our problems, just like any family. But my parents are extremely loving people.

Every family is dysfunctional, whether you want to admit it or not.

Everybody has some dysfunction in their families.

All families are liable to have degenerate members.

I grew up in suburbia, so it's a world I'm familiar with... but in my experience, all the families that I grew up thinking were the perfect families who kept it together... all their secrets would come out, and it'd be something dark and disgusting beneath the surface, so I wanted to exploit that.

I talk all the time about how much I read growing up and how much I love Stephen King and how he impacted my work from a genre perspective, but Pat Conroy wrote some of the most magnificent stories about characters who had to deal with dysfunctional families and try to find a place of honor in their own world and the pain of loss.

The denial of suffering is, in fact a better definition of illness than its acceptance.

American families don't work. There is an illusion that they do.

It seems like all the sitcoms on now, the families are kind of dysfunctional.

The great law of denial belongs to the powerful forces of life, whether the case be one of coolish baked beans, or an unrequited affection.

Take a look at my family, a different father every weekend.

Seeing is believing to most families who have lived with a drinker.

That which is denied cannot be healed.

It doesn't matter if the truth is right there out in front of your eyes. You will find a way, a mechanism, in order to keep your own system of denial. So as I always say it, denial is a river that runs in the - in Egypt. So we became very good in that.

I grew up in what was not so much a familyas a genetic disaster.

I cover my face with my arms because this isn't happening. It isn't possible. For someone to make Peeta forget he loves me . . . no one can do that.

My parents were extremely reluctant. When my father was clearly dying, my mother refused to acknowledge it.

In fact, I told our dear friends, the Burrell boys, five boys lived next door to us. "Why, we don't see your dad anymore?" "Oh, yeah. Yeah. He" - I lied. I said, "He comes home at night when you guys are in bed. He gets us up and we play." I said it so much that I started to believe it myself, you know?

He [Ranger] stopped in front of my parents' house, and we both looked to the door. My mother and my grandmother were standing there, watching us. "I'm not sure I feel comfortable about the way your grandma looks at me," Ranger said. [Stephanie] "She wants to see you naked." "I wish you hadn't told me that, babe." "Everyone I know wants to see you naked." "And you?" "Never crossed my mind." I held my breath when I said it, and I hoped God wouldn't stike me down dead for lying.