#function

A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart. ↗

— Keri Hulme

#family #relationships #family

It is hundreds of tiny threads of memories, which sew people together through the years. Despite, their mental separation they stay woven into that tapestry out of habit, emotion, obsession or fear. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#dysfunctional-families #family #marriage #relationships #family

Everyone is screwed up, the ones who try to say they aren’t, they’re the ones who are the worst off. ↗

— Holly Hood

#life #love #truthful #life

Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy. Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark suit and your best black shoes, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#funerals #rituals #social-functions #death

... I slipped our wicker bed and walked the sands where we were also roughly repeated: some young couple, "you did," "I didn't," "you sure the fuck did" – they hugged that bicker to their chests like blankets fighting cold. ↗

— Albert Goldbarth

#fighting #poetry #relationships #relationship

They don’t teach kidnapping at Eton, dad ↗

— Gwenn Wright

#dysfunctional-relationship #peter-strauss #von-strassenberg-saga #vssaga #ya

Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books? ↗

— Mitch Albom

#books #dark #dysfunctional #everybody #favorite

Furthermore, order is a necessary condition for making a structure function. A physical mechanism, be it a team of laborers, the body of an animal, or a machine, can work only if it is in physical order. ↗

— Rudolf Arnheim

#body #condition #function #furthermore #laborers

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#control #describing #every #function #language

A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership. ↗

— Chinua Achebe

#educated #functioning #grounded #healthy #leadership