Feuding Sisters Quotes

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time.

Shy South comes home to her farm to find a blackened shell, her brother and sister stolen, and knows she’ll have to go back to bad old ways if she’s ever to see them again. She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old step-father Lamb for company. But it turns out he’s hiding a bloody past of his own. None bloodier. Their journey will take them across the lawless plains, to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feuds, duels, and massacres, high into unmapped mountains to a reckoning with ancient enemies, and force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, a man no one should ever have to trust…

They behaved in ways that celebrated decadence and ambition, and the passions and feuds of their personal lives thrilled Euryale. Hungry for snippets of their hierarchical melodramas, she consumed the gossip and obsessed over their increasingly tangled relations.

Not a single family finds itself exempt from that one haunted casualty who suffered irreparable damage in the crucible they entered at birth. Where some children can emerge from conditions of soul-killing abuse and manage to make their lives into something of worth and value, others can’t limp away from the hurts and gleanings time decanted for them in flawed beakers of memory. They carry the family cross up the hill toward Calvary and don’t mind letting every other member of their aggrieved tribe in on the source of their suffering. There is one crazy that belongs to each of us: the brother who kills the spirit of any room he enters; the sister who’s a drug addict in her teens and marries a series of psychopaths, always making sure she bears their children, who carry their genes of madness to the grave. There’s the neurotic mother who’s so demanding that the sound of her voice over the phone can cause instant nausea in her daughters. The variations are endless and fascinating. I’ve never attended a family reunion where I was not warned of a Venus flytrap holding court among the older women, or a pitcher plant glistening with drops of sweet poison trying to sell his version of the family maelstrom to his young male cousins. When the stories begin rolling out, as they always do, one learns of feuds that seem unbrokerable, or sexual abuse that darkens each tale with its intimation of ruin. That uncle hates that aunt and that cousin hates your mother and your sister won’t talk to your brother because of something he said to a date she later married and then divorced. In every room I enter I can sniff out unhappiness and rancor like a snake smelling the nest of a wren with its tongue. Without even realizing it, I pick up associations of distemper and aggravation. As far as I can tell, every family produces its solitary misfit, its psychotic mirror image of all the ghosts summoned out of the small or large hells of childhood, the spiller of the apple cart, the jack of spades, the black-hearted knight, the shit stirrer, the sibling with the uncontrollable tongue, the father brutal by habit, the uncle who tried to feel up his nieces, the aunt too neurotic ever to leave home. Talk to me all you want about happy families, but let me loose at a wedding or a funeral and I’ll bring you back the family crazy. They’re that easy to find.

Somehow she'd labeled those days a humiliation. She'd based her choices--her giant house, her daughters' schools, her constant attention to family life--on erecting a wall between her grim childhood and her bright future. But she was beginning to see that the camaraderie with her brother and sister, the yummy microwaved dinners, the way they'd crowd around the small TV to watch Family Feud, yelling out answers--in some ways, those days had been wonderful. She promised herself now: it will be okay.

But the other thing about Romeo and Juliet? Both only children. Not a sister between them. And you can tell because even when you’re happy and don’t want to hear it, sisters won’t let you settle a blood feud or fake your own death. Sisters don’t care how he’s magic or how it feels when his hands touch your face and his eyes meet your eyes or how much he changes your life and opens your world and everything in it, especially you. They won’t green-light your ill-founded, life-ruining plan just because you’re in love. With sisters, at the very least, you’re going to need a much better reason than that.

If she dies, you’re all to blame,” he said, turning accusing eyes on his family and hers. “This damned feud has to stop. Here. Now. For good.” He turned his gaze to Sam and said, “I’m sorry for what happened to you. It was an accident, plain and simple. I love your sister and I am, by God, going to make her my wife.” He turned to the rest of them and said, “And we’re going to be showing up for the holidays, and you’d better damned well make us welcome.” Owen was crying, the tears streaming unashamedly town his face. “I love Bayleigh Creed. Do you hear me? I love her!” “I think everyone can hear you just fine,” Bay murmured. “Oh, God, Red,” he said, smiling down at her through the blur of tears. “I thought you were dying.” She lifted a shaky hand to her head, but he caught it before she could touch the wound. “My head hurts like hell. But I enjoyed the speech, Owe.

A grown woman tasting a spoonful of Georgia's Mousse au Citron at a late afternoon lunch, then suddenly standing and announcing that she needed to reconcile with her estranged sister before it was too late. She'd hastened away, leaving her coat, one hundred euros to pay the bill, and the mostly uneaten mousse at the table. After devouring Georgia's beet and goat cheese tart one bitter winter evening, an American man with an engagement ring nestled on top of a slice of Georgia's cherry clafoutis looked across the table at his girlfriend and said later that he could suddenly see clearly that she was not the love of his life. He'd hastened back to the kitchen to remove the ring from the dessert where it was waiting to be served at the right moment. They left the restaurant with the ring in his pocket and his girlfriend in tears. There had been others. Many others, now that she thought of it. It had been a bit of a joke among the kitchen staff, that Georgia's dishes could cause more breakups and engagements and family feuds and reconciliations than the restaurant had ever seen. She'd never really put it all together before, but now that she thought of it... "I think my cooking might give people clarity somehow," Georgia said in surprise.

The Sumerian pantheon was headed by an "Olympian Circle" of twelve, for each of these supreme gods had to have a celestial counterpart, one of the twelve members of the Solar System. Indeed, the names of the gods and their planets were one and the same (except when a variety of epithets were used to describe the planet or the god's attributes). Heading the pantheon was the ruler of Nibiru, ANU whose name was synonymous with "Heaven," for he resided on Nibiru. His spouse, also a member of the Twelve, was called ANTU. Included in this group were the two principal sons of ANU: E.A ("Whose House Is Water"), Anu's Firstborn but not by Antu; and EN.LIL ("Lord of the Command") who was the Heir Apparent because his mother was Antu, a half sister of Anu. Ea was also called in Sumerian texts EN.KI ("Lord Earth"), for he had led the first mission of the Anunnaki from Nibiru to Earth and established on Earth their first colonies in the E.DIN ("Home of the Righteous Ones")—the biblical Eden. His mission was to obtain gold, for which Earth was a unique source. Not for ornamentation or because of vanity, but as away to save the atmosphere of Nibiru by suspending gold dust in that planet's stratosphere. As recorded in the Sumerian texts (and related by us in The 12th Planet and subsequent books of The Earth Chronicles), Enlil was sent to Earth to take over the command when the initial extraction methods used by Enki proved unsatisfactory. This laid the groundwork for an ongoing feud between the two half brothers and their descendants, a feud that led to Wars of the Gods; it ended with a peace treaty worked out by their sister Ninti (thereafter renamed Ninharsag). The inhabited Earth was divided between the warring clans. The three sons of Enlil—Ninurta, Sin, Adad—together with Sin's twin children, Shamash (the Sun) and Ishtar (Venus), were given the lands of Shem and Japhet, the lands of the Semites and Indo-Europeans: Sin (the Moon) lowland Mesopotamia; Ninurta, ("Enlil's Warrior," Mars) the highlands of Elam and Assyria; Adad ("The Thunderer," Mercury) Asia Minor (the land of the Hittites) and Lebanon. Ishtar was granted dominion as the goddess of the Indus Valley civilization; Shamash was given command of the spaceport in the Sinai peninsula. This division, which did not go uncontested, gave Enki and his sons the lands of Ham—the brown/black people—of Africa: the civilization of the Nile Valley and the gold mines of southern and western Africa—a vital and cherished prize. A great scientist and metallurgist, Enki's Egyptian name was Ptah ("The Developer"; a title that translated into Hephaestus by the Greeks and Vulcan by the Romans). He shared the continent with his sons; among them was the firstborn MAR.DUK ("Son of the Bright Mound") whom the Egyptians called Ra, and NIN.GISH.ZI.DA ("Lord of the Tree of Life") whom the Egyptians called Thoth (Hermes to the Greeks)—a god of secret knowledge including astronomy, mathematics, and the building of pyramids. It was the knowledge imparted by this pantheon, the needs of the gods who had come to Earth, and the leadership of Thoth, that directed the African Olmecs and the bearded Near Easterners to the other side of the world. And having arrived in Mesoamerica on the Gulf coast—just as the Spaniards, aided by the same sea currents, did millennia later—they cut across the Mesoamerican isthmus at its narrowest neck and—just like the Spaniards due to the same geography—sailed down from the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica southward, to the lands of Central America and beyond. For that is where the gold was, in Spanish times and before.

Austin required all reference to sickness be cut. Consistent with secrecy was the refusal of the Norcross sisters to let Todd see the letters in their possession. These remaining witnesses to Emily’s ills in her teenage years, and to the treatment she endured in Boston in 1864 and 1865, shielded their cousin

Lavinia turned against Susan, the primacy of whose tie with Emily was ever more evident as letters came to light. Why had Emily confided in Sue and concealed this hoard from the sister who had protected her so faithfully?

Lavinia insisted that Todd’s preface should include a statement that Emily Dickinson’s sister had collected the letters. Todd, unaccustomed to submit on demand, persuaded Roberts Brothers to reprint the letters with a different version of that sentence. It was to say that Emily Dickinson’s sister had asked Mabel Loomis Todd to collect her letters, implying Todd alone had done the job.

Mabel Todd took the offensive with her expanded edition of the Dickinson letters. Her preface presented it as the first book ever issued about Emily Dickinson, prepared at the requests of the poet’s brother and sister: Austin Dickinson, Lavinia Dickinson ‘and I’ collected letters ‘which they entrusted to me’ to edit and publish. At a stroke, this authorised editor displaced an unauthorised niece.

Norcross was distant and scrupulous: she offered to read aloud from the extracts and letters she had copied so that Todd could check the proofs for the forthcoming volumes, but no eyes, she insists, will ever fall on the censored content. The following letter makes it plain that a huge batch of Dickinson’s letters—the originals—are to disappear: Concord [Massachusetts] Aug. 1, 1894 My dear Mrs. Todd, … I cannot send the letters, not because I fear they will be lost, but because my sister and I are not willing that any one even Vinnie should have the free reading of them; many of them have whole sentences which were intended for no eyes but ours, and on our own account as well as Emily’s no one else will ever read them. This we consider our right, and we must insist upon it.

strange scene takes place in the middle of 1891, when the biographical project has barely begun. Mabel, with Austin’s collusion, begins to tamper * with the overwhelming evidence of Emily’s bond with Susan. A booklet containing ‘One sister have I in the house / And one a hedge away’ is taken apart so as to remove the poem. Emily’s sewing holes are cut to disguise the poem’s place in the booklet, but though the page is thus mutilated, and torn in two places, it’s not destroyed for the sake of another poem on the verso. Using black ink the mutilator scores out all the lines and, most heavily, the climax ‘Sue—forevermore!

So it was that Lavinia fired a shot against Sue’s publication. Her protest to Ward laid out the law of ownership. A writer might give a manuscript to someone else, but the possessor is not the owner. Legally, the copyright on the writing remains with writer, and upon death transfers to the writer’s heir. On the basis of Emily’s will, which left Lavinia ‘everything’, Lavinia claimed (pushing the point) that Emily had granted her exclusive rights to her papers, and though Emily gave copies of poems to others they were given simply for private reading ‘and not to pass the property in them, which is mine’. Unsurprisingly Susan challenged this. She had lost her husband to Mabel. Her friendship with Lavinia was being destroyed and now the thing she held most dear, her private relationship with Emily, was being ripped from her. She sounds a little desperate as she writes to Ward: ‘the sister is quite jealous of my treasure … All[?] [the poems and letters] I have are mine—given me by my dear Emily while living[,] so I can in honor do with them as I please.

Austin required all reference to sickness be cut. Consistent with secrecy was the refusal of the Norcross sisters to let Todd see the letters in their possession. These remaining witnesses to Emily’s ills in her teenage years, and to the treatment she endured in Boston in 1864 and 1865, shielded their cousin from biographical intrusion.

Austin, infuriated, apologised to Mr Hardy for Lavinia’s change of mind. ‘This may all seem very queer to you, and it is. We are a queer lot.’ His revenge was to cast Lavinia not as staunch promoter of their sister’s greatness but as a rural dimwit thrilled to receive a publishing contract addressed to herself in a big envelope from Boston. Lavinia, he said, was ‘disturbed by the feeling that somehow her glory and magnificence are dimmed by any other than her supreme self being recognized’.

The shocked silence of last night had given way to mutterings which had become resignation, then calm acceptance: Uaithne had killed a Brigannon, yes, had plunged them all into a feud with another tribe that might be the death of them all before spring, but she was also Echraidhe, one of them, their sister, and her madness-if it was madness-was bright and proud and beautiful.

Images of a pale dragon caged and raging, locked within a chamber among the roots of a great tree. A wolf upon a plain, a thick chain binding him, small figures swarming, stabbing, the wolf’s jaws wide as it howled. “Ulfrir, wolf-god,” Kráka breathed. “It’s the Guðfalla,” Biórr whispered. “The gods-fall.” So many images, Elvar struggled to take it all in: figures hanging from the boughs of trees, many of them, skeletal wings spiking from their backs. “The Gallows Wood,” Elvar said. She remembered that tale, of how the gods Orna and Ulfrir had found their firstborn daughter slain, her wings hacked from her back. Lik-Rifa had done it, the dragon, Orna’s sister. As vengeance Orna and Ulfrir had hunted Lik-Rifa’s god-touched offspring and slaughtered them. Ripped their backs open and hacked their ribs apart, pulling them out in a parody of wings and hanging the corpses from trees. The blood-eagle, it was now called. The first blood feud, Elvar thought. The images went on and on, telling the tale of the gods at war: Berser the bear, Orna the eagle, Hundur the hound, Rotta the rat, many, many more; and Snaka, father, maker, coiling about them all, glowing venom dripping from his fangs as he entered the blood-fray and consumed his children. “I thought all of the oath stones had been destroyed,” Sighvat said. “We are on the arse-end of the world,” Agnar said. “This one has survived.” He was still staring up at the huge slab, eyes following the glowing lines as they traced the images. “So, that is where your bloodline comes from,” Agnar said to Berak in his chains. He pointed to an image of a giant bear, jaws wide, spittle spraying. Berak said nothing, just glowered at the image. “They are the fathers and mothers of all us Tainted,” Kráka said. “Snaka loved his creations, when he was not feasting on them, and so did his children.” She stared at the serpent-coils that spiralled across the granite. “Why did they fight?” Sighvat muttered. “What started this war, led to the near-destruction of all?” “Jealousy and murder,” Uspa said. “Blood feud. Lik-Rifa the dragon thought her sister was plotting her death, and Rotta the rat fuelled her paranoia. She murdered Orna and Ulfrir’s daughter, created the vaesen in secret, would have used them to destroy Orna and all those who supported her. But Orna found out and lured Lik-Rifa into the caverns and chambers deep within the roots of Oskutreð, the great Ash Tree, and with her siblings bound Lik-Rifa there. That is what caused the war.

Mom, how are we originem? How are they not all gone?" I asked. "One lived," Mom said. "You several-times-great-grandmother. There was a nasty feud, but Rowena made her escape from the final, horrendous battle. She vowed to dilute the blood. Live as a normal witch, conceal our origin. We couldn't let ourselves have children with another witch or a warlock or any other being of power for that matter. In theory, we would eventually be safe enough to live our lives without the fear once the magic was diluted." "But it didn't, did it?" Ryker asked from behind me. Mom turned Eliza's head to study Ryker. She nodded and looked back down at me. "No, it didn't work. You don't have much power on your own, my heart. If you've been trying spellwork it probably went awry, didn't it?" I nodded. "How did you do it? I watched your work for hours and it never went wrong." "Blood, my heart. The only spellwork I did was what I had to mix and add and brew, and as it finished I would add blood. Even a drop will do. That is the way of our power." "The smell of originem on Dani is as strong as it was before your coven died out," Ryker said. "A mistake that we each found out too late. Once I became one with The Book of Sisters, it became clear. The power could in theory be diluted, but not the blood. Never our blood.

I had come to Ni-Yota with a simple mission: save my sister, kill the wizard. I had teeth, wings, determination, and maybe a bit of magic to aid me. Easy as gobbling a goat. Instead, I found myself entangled with a strange human, feuding dragons, and a web of intrigue I didn’t understand. Also, Ni-Yota had no goats.

As Mabel inserts herself between husband and wife, and then between poet and ‘Sister’, and as a fissure in the family cracks and then breaks open early in 1885,

There are similar mutilations of many letters, especially Emily’s early letters to Austin, written when he was in love with Sue, and letters to Sue filled with Emily’s parallel, more entrancing ardour. All the mutilations are designed to obliterate the poet’s attachment to ‘Sister’.

Kennedy’s influence was cut short by the assassination, but he weighed in with a memo to LBJ. The problem, Kennedy explained on January 16, was that “most federal programs are directed at only a single aspect of the problem. They are sometimes competitive and frequently aimed at only a temporary solution or provide for only a minimum level of subsistence. These programs are always planned for the poor—not with the poor.” Kennedy’s solution was a new cabinet-level committee to coordinate comprehensive, local programs that “[involve] the cooperation of the poor” Kennedy listed six cities where local “coordinating mechanisms” were strong enough that pilot programs might be operational by fall. “In my judgment,” he added prophetically, “the anti-poverty program could actually retard the solution of these problems, unless we use the basic approach outlined above.” If there was such a thing as a “classical” vision of community action, Kennedy’s memo was its epitaph. On February 1, while Kennedy was in East Asia, Johnson appointed Sargent Shriver to head the war on poverty. It was an important signal that the president would be running the program his way, not Bobby’s. It was also a canny personal slap at RFK—who, according to Ted Sorensen, had “seriously consider[ed] heading” the antipoverty effort. Viewed in this light, Johnson’s choice of Shriver was particularly shrewd. Not only was Shriver hardworking and dynamic—a great salesman—but he was a Kennedy in-law, married to Bobby’s sister Eunice. In Kennedy family photos Shriver stood barrel-chested and beaming, a member of the inner circle, every bit as vigorous, handsome, Catholic, and aristocratic as the rest. By placing Shriver at the helm of the war on poverty, Johnson demonstrated his fealty to the dead president. But LBJ and Bobby both understood that Shriver was very much his own man. After the assassination Shriver signaled his independence from the Kennedys by slipping the new president a note card delineating “What Bobby Thinks.” In 1964, Shriver’s status as a quasi-Kennedy made him Bobby’s rival for the vice presidency, but even before then their relationship was hardly fraternal. Within the Kennedy family Shriver was gently mocked. His liberalism on civil rights earned him the monikers “Boy Scout,” “house Communist,” and “too-liberal in-law.” Bobby’s unease was returned in kind. “Believe me,” RFK’s Senate aide Adam Walinsky observed, “Sarge was no close pal brother-in-law and he wasn’t giving Robert Kennedy any extra breaks.” If Shriver’s loyalty was divided, it was split between Johnson and himself, not Johnson and Kennedy.