Siblings Quotes

True siblings are bound together by far more essential things than blood, while more times than many blood isn't thicker than water.

To be misunderstood is one thing, but the curious hostility of a sibling's approach lies less in what they miss than in the strange backdated nature of the things they choose to know. A person can be thirty, thirty-five, and yet still largely described by her sisters in terms of things which happened to be true at the age of seventeen.

What was joy, anyway. What was the worth of happiness that left behind a crater thrice the size of its impact. What did people who spoke of joy know of what it meant, to sleep and dream only of the whistle of planes and knocks at the door and on windows and to wake with a hand at one's throat— one's own hand, at one's own throat. What did they know of not speaking for days, of not having known the touch of another, never having known, of want and of not having felt the press of skin to one's own, and what did they know of a house that only ever emptied out. Of animals dying and fathers dying and mothers dying and finding bullet holes in the barks of trees right below hearts carved around names of people who weren't there and the bloody lip of a sibling and what did what did she know— of what could she possibly know of what it—

estranged from a relative. That translates into about 67 million people, more than the number of Americans who suffer from allergies. Half of these estranged adults have had no contact for four years or longer. Most of these rifts came between parents and children or between siblings.

Eighteenth-century households were workshops. Mothers engaged in soapmaking, weaving, candle-dipping, slaughtering, and endless sewing relied on older children to care for their littlest siblings. 10

Nancy inspired teasing in her younger siblings to a greater or lesser degree, but she was the Queen of Teasers – ‘a cosmic teaser’, Decca would write. She seemed to know exactly what would irritate her victims most, fastening on any insecurities with devastatingly accurate effect. ‘She once upset us,’ Debo recalled, ‘by saying to Unity, Decca and me, “Do you realize that the middle of your names are nit, sick and bore?”’28 One friend likened her humour to the barbed hook hidden beneath a riot of colourful feathers in a fishing fly. And barbed is an apt word, for there was often a cruel element to her teasing, which caused real distress.