In some ways, siblings, and especially sisters, are more influential in your childhood than your parents.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Your parents are the parents you know best. Your brother and sister, if you have them, are the brother and sister you know best. They may not be the ones you like the best. They may not be the most interesting, but they are the closest and probably the clearest to you.
The great thing about all my siblings is we all agree we had a horrendous childhood. It's not like it doesn't affect us now; it affects us every day, in everything we do.
From a young age, I wanted to differentiate myself from my older siblings.
Parents always stay older than you, but sibling sort of become adults together, and that complicates that relationship, I think.
It's a funny thing when you know someone and you meet their siblings - you get so much a sense of who they are because when you can recognize similar traits in the family, you understand exactly why they are the way they are.
I think my parents undoubtedly influenced me on some level.
I've got three sisters, five aunties, and my mom. It must have had an influence on me growing up.
Sibling relationships figure in a lot of my books. You don't often see relationships between adult siblings explored in fiction.
I've never had siblings, I didn't grow up in a big family; it was just me and my single mom. And hectic family dysfunction was actually something that I craved.
I don't have siblings, which is probably the biggest reason why my parents were able to give the attention to my career that they did.