Orphans Quotes

“The truth is you can be orphaned again and again and again. The truth is, you will be. And the secret is, this will hurt less and less each time until you can't feel a thing. Trust me on this.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“If we cannot relate anymore to the world that we live in, we are bound to remain like orphans, forlorn in the wasteland of our desires. ("Non mais, t'as vu l'heure !")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“There," she said. She rocked him back and forth. "There, you foolish, beautiful boy who wants to change the world. There, there. And who could keep from loving you? Who could keep from loving a boy so brave and true?”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“When you lose your parents as a child, you are indoctrinated into a club, you re taken into life's severest confidence. You are undeceived.”
― Hilary Thayer Hamann, Anthropology of an American Girl

“The purpose of having the orphans study all these diverse fields was not for them to just become geniuses, but to become polymaths – meaning they would be geniuses in a wide variety of fields.”
― James Morcan, Lance Morcan, The Ninth Orphan

“The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. He was handsome — this orphan, this foundling, this outcast.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

“I reached down and picked up a baseball bat at my feet and I flung it as hard as it could. It circled and arced high in the air until it slammed against the side of the dining hall with a crack and fell.
I sat down in the dirt. Then I lay down in the dirt.
Because not only was there no trail to follow, there was no evidence he’d ever been here.
There was no evidence any of them had been here.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Perfect Glass

“Mother was anchor. Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Orphans are the only ones who get to choose their fathers, and they love them twice as much.”
― Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son

“Orphanages are the only places that ever left me feeling empty and full at the same time.”
― John M. Simmons

“Jerusha leaned forward watching with curiosity - and a touch of wistfulness - the stream of carriages and automobiles that rolled out of the asylum gates. In imagination she followed first one equipage, then another, to the big houses dotted along the hillside. She pictured herself in a fur coat and a velvet hat trimmed with feathers leaning back in the seat and nonchalantly murmuring "Home" to the driver. But on the door-sill of her home the picture grew blurred.”
― Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

“If your brother can't 'old 'is own against a bunch of orphans, 'e'd best leave off playing 'azard altogether!”
― Sheri Cobb South, The Weaver Takes a Wife

“When you bury a parent, you lower his or her casket into the ground, but the history between you lives on. The funeral is an ending, yes, but it is also a beginning - the start of a true reckoning with those hurts between you that must be laid to rest. When we buried my mother, I mourned her then and in the years that followed. As I grieved, I thought I'd long since come to terms with my father - with how he'd both delighted and failed me, with the ways in which he'd unknowingly bruised me just as all parents do, despite their best intentions.”
― Cicely Tyson, Just as I Am

“Tell me, Theodore, were you playing against orphans, by any chance?”
― Sheri Cobb South, The Weaver Takes a Wife

“But when the people who gave you life have departed this earth, you enter a strange new corridor of detachment. You are untethered, disconnected from the two story lines that gave birth to your one.”
― Cicely Tyson, Just as I Am

“We can point the finger at adults for the stupid decisions they make in life, but an orphaned child can never be blamed for the situation in which they find themselves.”
― Kevin Ansbro, In the Shadow of Time

“Because DSS pay is basically the fuck-you peanut butter sandwich type of paycheck. That’s what the big world thinks it’s worth, to save white-trash orphans.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“Maybe only an orphan can understand this, but we had been cut free from our anchor and the blow was crushing. We didn't know who we were, and more importantly, we didn't know whose we were -- forever proving that identity precedes purpose. You can't know who you are until you've settled whose you are.

[Bones, to Murphy Shepherd, about himself and his brother Frank]”
― Charles Martin, The Record Keeper

“Death came into my family and reminded us of its close proximity to humankind”
― Loraine Masiya Mponela

“We didn’t know sadness until we had a point of comparison.”
― Andrés Barba, Such Small Hands

“They're bartering for costumes. Grace has a big heart. She lends costumes to those who can't afford the full rental price. Kids repay her with candy, after they've been trick-or-treating."
Bartering? This he had to see. He walked toward them, only to stop by a rack of capes. He squinted between hangers, staying hidden. He recognized the children. Each of them lived with single parents or in a foster home. For all of them, money would be tight. Most couldn't afford a cool costume.”
― Kate Angell, The Cottage on Pumpkin and Vine

“Greed will always welcome orphans into the mix and become the parents that the children wished for in the first place.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Who will cry for the children when we have killed their parents?”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“It can take billions of years for light to reach us through the galaxies, which is to say, History is ever arriving. So it's most likely that the decision, seemingly all mine, was already made years ago by someone else, which is to say, language — that is to say, translation — always arises from collective consciousness.”
― Don Mee Choi, DMZ Colony

“The world has enough orphans. Maybe it's time that we started to be parents.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“What will be your legacy to the world?
The orphans that you have fathered in your name.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“It's funny how children can still go on even after their parents have died. You'd think it was only polite for someone who gave you entrance to the world to see you through it.”
― Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

“Despite being surrounded by donors, caretakers and volunteers at all hours of the day, orphanage life can be lonely.”
― Deborah Dzifah Tamakloe, Forest In The Wilderness: Life Inside A Ghanaian Orphanage

“Suddenly there were hands that we didn’t recognize, and we became strangers.”
― Andrés Barba, Such Small Hands