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Who really said it

Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood

Not Charles Dickens — actually Douglas McGrath Douglas McGrath 1958–2022 · American screenwriter & director
Disputed In copyright

The sentence is closing narration written by Douglas McGrath for his 2002 film adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby, spoken by Vincent Crummles (Nathan Lane): “They came to see that family need not be defined merely as those with whom they share blood but for those for whom they would give their blood.” The version that circulates under Dickens’s name — ungrammatical, with its stray “not only… but also for” — is a later garbled retelling of that film line, and it appears nowhere in Dickens’s own 1838–39 novel ↗.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood” Not Charles Dickens. The line is closing narration written by Douglas McGrath for his 2002 film "Nicholas Nickleby," spoken by Vincent Crummles: "They came to see that family need not be defined merely as those with whom they share blood but for those for whom they would give their blood." The popular wording — "Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood" — is a later garbled retelling, and appears in none of Dickens's works. — Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Charles Dickens. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Douglas McGrath and the rights holders in the 2002 Nicholas Nickleby screenplay). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Douglas McGrath — American screenwriter, director & playwright. Theme: "Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

Film
Nicholas Nickleby
Written & directed by
Douglas McGrath
Released
27 December 2002 (US)
Spoken by
Vincent Crummles (Nathan Lane), narrating

What happens when too early we lose a parent, that party on whom we rely for only everything? We must build a new family, person by person. … They came to see that family need not be defined merely as those with whom they share blood but for those for whom they would give their blood. Film narration — not Dickens

Two passages from Crummles’s narration, separated in the film, as transcribed by Quotes.net ↗. Transcriptions of the second sentence vary slightly (“but for those for whom” / “but as those for whom”); we could not obtain the shooting script to settle it.

Mr. Crummles's family/blood line, Nicholas Nickleby (2002), at Quotes.net

How we know

In copyright

Everything Charles Dickens actually wrote is long in the public domain — he died in 1870, and Nicholas Nickleby is free at Project Gutenberg ↗. This sentence is not his. The oldest source we could document for it is a film released in December 2002 ↗, so the screenplay is squarely in copyright; the mangled wording that circulates under Dickens’s name is an anonymous derivative of that line with no identified author, and no public-domain status can be claimed for either.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The attribution, untangled

This is a three-stage misattribution: a screenwriter’s line, mangled by retelling, then retro-fitted to a Dickens book that has nothing to do with it.

Douglas McGrath, Nicholas Nickleby (2002) Real source

Vincent Crummles’s closing narration, transcribed at Quotes.net ↗ as “They came to see that family need not be defined merely as those with whom they share blood but for those for whom they would give their blood.” Wikipedia ↗ credits McGrath as writer-director and Nathan Lane as both Crummles and the film’s narrator.

An unknown rewriter Garbled

“Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood” is not a sentence Dickens or McGrath would have let stand. Goodreads carries it with no source whatsoever ↗, liked by over 400 readers. A tidier variant is filed there under Nicholas Nickleby ↗ — the film’s phrasing, credited to the novel.

Mugby Junction (1866) Circular

A print-on-demand publisher issued an edition whose title contains the quote ↗ (A Word To The Wise, 20 August 2013). Retail listings then read as sourcing. The actual text ↗ contains nothing like it.

Other “Dickens” lines from the same screenplay Not isolated

“Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes” is also Crummles in the 2002 film, transcribed alongside the family line ↗. Lydia Craig’s research, summarised by Loyola University Chicago ↗, notes that misattributed Dickens quotes were “occasionally… derived from screenplays of Dickens films, such as Douglas McGrath’s Nicholas Nickleby.”

Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) wrote the novel; a screenwriter born 88 years after him wrote the sentence. Wikiquote’s Dickens page ↗ does not list the line in any section, sourced or misattributed.

Context

Why this one travelled

The line does real work in the film. McGrath’s Nicholas Nickleby is bookended by Vincent Crummles talking straight to the audience, and the closing narration is the moral of the adaptation: Nicholas loses a father, and assembles a household out of Smike, the Cheerybles, Newman Noggs and the Crummles troupe. “We must build a new family, person by person,” Crummles says earlier in the same speech. It is a warm, well-made sentence — it is simply a 2002 sentence.

Adaptation drift is the mechanism. A viewer hears a line in a Dickens film, remembers it as Dickens, and posts it; the next person adds a book title to make it look sourced. Lydia Craig’s study of internet Dickens “quotes” in Dickens Quarterly names this exact route, and McGrath’s Nicholas Nickleby specifically, as a source of lines the novelist never wrote. The same screenplay gave the internet “Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes” — also Crummles, also filed on quote sites under Dickens.

An adaptation puts words in a dead novelist’s mouth. The internet then signs his name.

How “Mugby Junction” got attached to it

Most quote sites give the line no source at all. The ones that do usually say Mugby Junction — Dickens’s 1866 railway-station collection — which is puzzling until you look at why.

A print-on-demand publisher, A Word To The Wise, issued an edition of Mugby Junction in August 2013 whose listed title is literally Mugby Junction: “Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.” The quote is cover copy, harvested from the web, not a line from the book. Retail listings then made it look like a citation, and the attribution loop closed on itself.

The Project Gutenberg text of Mugby Junction contains the word “blood” nine times — a nosebleed, a murder, a torrent of it rushing to a narrator’s face, “no blood-money” — and not once in anything resembling this sentiment.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Love Friendship Kindness

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Nicholas Nickleby — full textProject Gutenberg

Dickens's actual 1838–39 novel, free and searchable. The phrase is not in it.
Mugby Junction — full textProject Gutenberg

The 1866 collection the quote is usually credited to. Also does not contain it.
Nicholas Nickleby (2002 film)Wikipedia

Confirms Douglas McGrath wrote and directed, and that Nathan Lane played Crummles and narrated.
Mr. Crummles quotes from the 2002 filmQuotes.net

Transcribes the family/blood narration — and the 'Happiness is a gift' line — as film dialogue.
An English PhD student fact-checks famous Dickens 'quotes'Loyola University Chicago

Lydia Craig on how Dickens misquotes spread — naming McGrath's screenplay as one origin.
Charles DickensWikiquote

The sourced and misattributed lists of Dickens quotations. This line appears in neither.

The real author

Who actually wrote it

Douglas McGrath

1958–2022 · American screenwriter, director & playwright

Douglas McGrath was born in Midland, Texas on 12 February 1958 and began his writing career on Saturday Night Live. He co-wrote Bullets Over Broadway (1994) with Woody Allen, earning an Academy Award nomination, then wrote and directed Emma (1996) and Nicholas Nickleby (2002). He died in New York City on 3 November 2022, aged 64, of a heart attack while performing his solo show — and, in one of the odder legacies a screenwriter can have, at least two of his invented lines now circulate worldwide as Charles Dickens’s.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Nicholas Nickleby (2002 film)

Douglas McGrath, writer and director, Nicholas Nickleby (2002), closing narration spoken by Vincent Crummles (Nathan Lane); line as transcribed at Quotes.net. No comparable sentence appears in Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), or in Mugby Junction (1866).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/family-not-only-need-to-consist-of-merely-those-whom-we/

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