mothers

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
c44c011	I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.	feminism hate love marriage married-life matrimony men mothers psychology relationships sons women	Martha Gellhorn
d990d43	"How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Coraline. "I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave." "Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline. "Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back."	humor mothers	Neil Gaiman
bdc1dd4	Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.	mothers	Audrey Niffenegger
7fcfa0e	The best love in the world, is the love of a man. The love of a man who came from your womb, the love of your son! I don't have a daughter, but maybe the love of a daughter is the best, too. I am first and foremost me, but right after that, I am a mother. The best thing that I can ever be, is me. But the best gift that I will ever have, is being a mother.	inspirational inspirational-quotes inspiring love mother motherhood mothers mothers-and-sons real-love sons-and-mothers the-best-gift the-greatest-gift the-love-of-a-son true-love	C. JoyBell C.
27afe35	Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.	activist aging beautiful-personatlity beautiful-soul charity communicators community compassion empathetic fathers friendships givers giving-heart helping-out homeless-tent-community inner-beauty inspiration inspirational jealousy judgement loving marine-life-conservation medical-missions mothers motivators openess outward-beauty people-of-action perspectives philosophy prayer real-people reflection rescuers search-and-rescue service takers tender time true-beauty truth vanity writing	Shannon L. Alder
d7a90e4	"Does your ma know you're this silly?" she demanded tartly. He nodded, comically sad. "The few gray hairs she has on her head are my doing. But" -- with an exaggerated change of mood -- "I send her plenty of money, so she can pay to have them dyed!" "I hope she beat you as a child," Onua grumbled."	mothers	Tamora Pierce
cd96e66	The big difference between my mom and me-- besides the fact that she is dead normal and I'm a magic-handling freak-- is that she's the real thing. She may have a slight problem seeing other people's points of view, but she's about it. She's a brass-bound bitch because she believes she knows best. I'm a brass-bound bitch because I don't want anyone getting close enough to find out what a whiny little knot of naked nerve endings I really am.	magic mothers	Robin McKinley
bbd77bc	My mother always said 'Don't bother other people.' I think that's good advice.	life mothers	Amy Sedaris
b1ed681	I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.	mothers people	Jodi Picoult
33ba8e1	"And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation."	concepts daughters family fear heritage hope ideas immigration joy language luck mothers perception tradition women	Amy Tan
ca0ca7c	She was a monster, but she was my monster.	monsters mothers	Jeanette Winterson
d73847f	"Good wombs have borne bad sons." -- (Miranda, I:2)"	descent heritage mothers sons the-tempest	William Shakespeare
4bb35a0	Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don't want their kids... but when you look more closely, you realize that they're doing those kids a favor. They're just trying to give them a better life.	mothers	Jodi Picoult
f9e792c	In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it.	mothers	Jonathan Safran Foer
942bc85	There's nothing like your mother's sympathetic voice to make you want to burst into tears.	motherhood mothers parents parents-and-children sympathy	Sophie Kinsella
9b9a11a	Right, except I'm not going to lie to my mom, because what kind of bastard lies to his own mother?	mothers	John Green
3759da6	Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.	guilt mothers sacrifice	Milan Kundera
f51f8c1	But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.	mothers mothers-love	Mitch Albom
76e549e	Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you.	louisa-may-alcott mothers	Louisa May Alcott
46f7112	A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.	mothers simple	Amy Tan
e33511d	I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.	mothers	Nella Larsen
bb3c28a	"She was not, herself, hugely in favor of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn't exactly . Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they'd been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they'd got the label which said "mother", everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said "child"..."	motherhood mothers	Terry Pratchett
99bbada	Mom had the kind of love for her that you could feel, like it was part of the atmosphere	love mothers	Peter Abrahams
47b01a4	It's the child who's supposed to cry, and the mom who makes it all better, not the other way around, which is why mothers will move heaven and earth to hold it together in front of their own kids.	jodi-picoult mothers	Jodi Picoult
a5e3515	I always feel sad for the girl that I was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me. She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. She tended to me. She administrated me.	mothers	Gillian Flynn
69b0e14	Billy covered his head with his blanket. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward - always got much sicker until she went away. It wasn't that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality. She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high school education. She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone through so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.	depression mothers	Kurt Vonnegut
a9206fc	If you want to be treated like a mother, act like one.	mothers parenting	Jeannette Walls
e483c9c	And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate.	janie men mothers	Zora Neale Hurston
65482d5	My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.	memory metaphor mothers	Vladimir Nabokov
9fe49ca	Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that the small flowered pattern was only a little lighter gray than the background. The dress came down to her ankles, and he strong, broad, bare feet moved quickly and deftly over the floor. Her thin, steel-gray hair was gathered in a sparse wispy knot at the back of her head. Strong, freckled arms were bare to the elbow, and her hands were chubby and delicate, like those of a plump little girl. She looked out into the sunshine. Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.	fear grace mothers	John Steinbeck
272b6fb	"I love you," was his reply. "I make myself keep on loving you, despite what you do. I've got to love you. We all have to love you, and believe in you, and think you are looking out for our best interests. But look at us, Momma, and really see us." --	best-interests despite faith family love mothers replies see sight trust	V.C. Andrews
3db6f32	"You will like her," he persisted. "Egad, she's after your own heart, maman! She shot me in the arm." "Voyons, do you think that is what I like?"	georgian mothers romance	Georgette Heyer Devil's Club
a4473c8	Mothers were much too sharp. They were like dogs. Buster always sensed when anything was out of the ordinary, and so did mothers. Mothers and dogs both had a kind of second sight that made them see into people's minds and know when anything unusual was going on.	mothers sense sharp	Enid Blyton
ade00ab	The clocks were striking midnight and the rooms were very still as a figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlid here, settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter.	louisa-may-alcott mothers	Louisa May Alcott
f726963	...she rejoiced as only mothers can in the good fortunes of their children.	jo-s-boys louisa-may-alcott mothers	Louisa May Alcott
c543c9e	I think this power of living in our children is one of the sweetest things in the world...	jo-s-boys louisa-may-alcott mothers	Louisa May Alcott
d2a3b09	That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.	irony life mothers people	Nick Hornby
153aaef	"The Patrician took a sip of his beer. "I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."	evil existentialism mothers patrician understanding	Terry Pratchett
13955e4	Some women just aren't cut out to be mothers, and unfortunately it had taken Susanna three kids to realize she was one of them.	logan mothers reality susanna	Kelley Armstrong
4d712f0	When my friends began to have babies and I came to comprehend the heroic labor it takes to keep one alive, the constant exhausting tending of a being who can do nothing and demands everything, I realized that my mother had done all of these things for me before I remembered. I was fed; I was washed; I was clothed; I was taught to speak and given a thousand other things, over and over again, hourly, daily, for years. She gave me everything before she gave me nothing.	babies childhood children family family-relationships motherhood mothering mothers	Rebecca Solnit
3a943bd	This is the role of the mother. And in that visit I really saw clearly, for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and also cuddles... but because in an interesting and and maybe an eerie and other worldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known.	mothers	Maya Angelou
636d819	"NOTHING HAS EVER LOOKED LIKE THAT EVER IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY," he said. His enthusiasm was adorable. I couldn't resist leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. "Just so you know, I'm right here," Mom said. "Sitting next to you. Your mother. Who held your hand as you took your first infantile steps." "It's friendly," I reminded her, turning to kiss her on the cheek. "Didn't feel too friendly," Gus mumbled just loud enough for me to hear. When surprised and excited and innocent Gus emerged from Grand Gesture Metaphorically Inclined Augustus, I literally could not resist."	hilarious mothers	John Green
075a375	Most young men are such bores. They haven't lived long enough to learn that they are not the wonders to the world they are to their mothers.	mothers mothers-and-sons sons young-men	L.M. Montgomery
a57ef69	She never called her son by any name but John; 'love' and 'dear', and such like terms, were reserved for Fanny.	funny-and-random mothers names sobriquet sons	Elizabeth Gaskell
8a5d8e6	The best thing she was, was her children.	motherhood mothers	Toni Morrison
e17f6e2	"For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling "vaguely guilty."	mothers neglect old-age parents sentimentality	William S. Burroughs
4d53d43	Dan clung to her in speechless gratitude, feeling the blessedness of mother love, -- that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it.	louisa-may-alcott mothers	Louisa May Alcott
19b9837	When Jordan was a baby he sat on top of me much as a fly rests on a hill of dung. And I nourished him as a hill of dung nourishes a fly, and when he had eaten his fill he left me. Jordan... I should have named him after a stagnant pond and then I could have kept him, but I named him after a river and in the flood-tide he slipped away.	children mothers rivers	Jeanette Winterson
fd0661d	(Just to give you an idea, Proust's reply was 'To be separated from Mama.') I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish. In the lower depths come enforced idleness, sexual boredom, and/or impotence. At the highest pitch, the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child.	children death fear friends idleness impotence misery mothers proust proust-questionnaire sex	Christopher Hitchens
815fe04	...A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place. She teaches you the nature of happiness: what is the right amount, what is too much, and the kind that makes you want more of what is bad for you. A mother helps her baby flex her first feelings of pleasure. She teaches her when to later exercise restraint, or to take squealing joy in recognizing the fluttering leaves of the gingko tree, to sense a quieter but more profound satisfaction in chancing upon an everlasting pine. A mother enables you to realize that there are different levels of beauty and therein lie the sources of pleasure, some of which are popular and ordinary, and thus of brief value, and others of which are difficult and rare, and hence worth pursuing.	mothers pleasure	Amy Tan
49d0095	Mothers are urgently trying to tell something to their daughters, and this urgency is precisely what repels their daughters, forcing them to turn away. Mothers are left stranded, madly holding a lump of London clay, some grass, some white tubers, a dandelion, a fat worm passing the world through itself.	daughters family generations life london love mothers mothers-and-daughters repel urgency	Zadie Smith
58f2428	But can I say, now that she is dead, long dead that I only half believed in her. I wanted, I needed her to revolt. I know, revolutions take vast energy like volcanic eruptions. I know. And the sick must husband their resources even as they are resourceful for their husbands. But I couldn't help wanting for her, couldn't help the feeling that she'd given in, that she had measured out with coffee spoons what it was that she might ask of life and having found it lacking, tragically, gapingly lacking, had decided none-the-less to accept her modest share. I wanted her ignoble, irresponsible, unreasonable, petty, grasping, fucking greedy for the lot of it, jostling and spitting and clawing for every grain of life.	anger daughters mothers women-s-roles	Claire Messud - The Woman Upstairs
6c55b53	I do not understand what makes mothers think they are walking-talking thermometers.But I think somewhere during the process of giving birth and changing diapers, they actually begin to belive they have this supernatural sense.	mothers supernatural	Melody Carlson
7375243	I'd wrestled against the inner voice of my mother, the voice of caution, of duty, of fear of the unknown, the voice that said the world was dangerous and safety was always the first measure and that often confused pleasure with danger, the mother who had, when I'd moved to the city, sent me clippings about young women who were raped and murdered there, who elaborated on obscure perils and injuries that had never happened to her all her life, and who feared mistakes even when the consequences were minor. Why go to Paradise when the dishes aren't done? What if the dirty dishes clamor more loudly than Paradise?	coming-of-age family family-relationships motherhood mothers	Rebecca Solnit
94ccbff	If my mother's intention in whole or in part was to ensure that I never had to suffer any indignity or embarrassment for being a Jew, then she succeeded well enough. And in any case there were enough intermarriages and 'conversions' on both sides of her line to make me one of those many hybrids who are to be found distributed all over the known world. And, as someone who doesn't really believe that the human species is subdivided by 'race,' let alone that a nation or nationality can be defined by its religion, why should I not let the whole question slide away from me? Why--and then I'll stop asking rhetorical questions--did I at some point resolve that, in whatever tone of voice I was asked 'Are you a Jew?' I would never hear myself deny it?	intermarriage jews mothers nationality race religion religious-conversions rhetorical-questions	Christopher Hitchens
2e467e8	This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there's someone else to do the housework.	mothers	Ben Aaronovitch
0f70b57	"I'm a mother," said her mother, in her foodless flat where the dust did not dare to settle, "and I know what I know."	mothers	Neil Gaiman
075eb31	And mother-like, Mrs. Jo forgot the threatened chastisement in tender lamentations over the happy scapegrace...	louisa-may-alcott mothers	Louisa May Alcott
a3ac35d	What thumbsuckers we all are...when it comes to mothers.	margaret-atwood mothers	Margaret Atwood
fbad83e	All suspects should be given the chance to telephone their lawyers or their mothers, and it would not be surprising if they chose to call their mothers. After all, your mother is fall more likely to believe in your innocence than your lawyer.	lawyers mothers	Alexander McCall Smith
bd0c651	And eventually in that house where everyone, even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies, finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the roof of his mouth, where even the sons of the house have to go into the cornfield with the rickshaw boy to joke about whores and compare the length of their members and whisper furtively about dreams of being film directors (Hanif's dream, which horrifies his dream-invading mother, who believes the cinema to be an extension of the brothel business), where life has been transmuted into grotesquery by the irruption into it of history, eventually in the murkiness of the underworld he cannot help himself, he finds his eyes straying upwards, up along delicate sandals and baggy pajamas and past loose kurta and above the dupatta, the cloth of modesty, until eyes meet eyes, and then	history mothers movies penises sexuality silence	Salman Rushdie
c5e4334	"Hideo," said my mother, in the terrifying way women have of passing without interval from one subject to another because they have them all present in their mind at once, "you haven't found any kind of relationship?" --	mothers women	Ursula K. Le Guin
c5222ac	You come from your mauma, you sleep in the bed with her till you're near twenty years grown, and you still don't know what haunches in the dark corners of her.	mothers secrets	Sue Monk Kidd
5d7f451	And her laugh was enough to make you want to kick over what you were doing and follow her down the street.	laughter mothers	Donna Tartt
41be3e1	Being a good mother is being a hero. Right?	mothers	Francesca Lia Block
3462f64	Outside in the sun the Holy Mother stood on her pedestal in the garden, sorry but unsympathetic. The usual position of mothers.	mothers sympathy the-lacuna	Barbara Kingsolver
4868850	God, He didn't write the scripts for the puny little players down here. We wrote them ourselves-with each day we lived, each word we spoke, each thought we etched on our brains. And Momma had written her script, too. And a sorry one it was.	down-here each-day god life living mothers players scripts speaking spoke spoken-words thought written	V.C. Andrews
8521ec3	We all have to love you, and believe in you, and think you are looking out for our best interests. But look at us, Momma, and really see us.	look looking love mothers parents see sight trust	V.C. Andrews
9e2391a	Bertie stared at his mother. She spoils things, he thought. All she ever does is spoil things. He had not started this conversation, and it was not his fault that they were now talking about Grey Owl. He sounded rather a nice man to Bertie. Any why should he not dress up in feathers and live in the forests if that was what he wanted to do? It was typical of his mother to try to spoil Grey Owl's fun.	mothers	Alexander McCall Smith
5303fad	Have I been conditioned to believe that if I am not solicitous, if I am not forthcoming, if I am not a never-ending cornicopia of entertaining delights, they will take their collections of milk-bottle tops and their mangy one-eared teddy bears and go away into the woods by themselves to play snipers? Probably. What my mother thinks was merely cute may have been lethal.	cuteness men-and-women mothering mothers mothers-and-daughters	Margaret Atwood
e836459	Have I been conditioned to believe that if I am not solicitous, if I am not forthcoming, if I am not a never-ending cornicopia of entertaining delights, they will take their collections of milk-bottle tops and their mangy one-eared teddy bears and go away into the woods by themselves to play snipers? Probably. What my mother things was merely cute may have been lethal.	entertaining mothering mothers mothers-and-daughters solicitous well-behaved-women	Margaret Atwood
70298e9	I doubt you would recognize an adventure of any sort if it came right up and bit you on the a--- Mother! I was going to say arm.	humorous-quotations mothers	Victoria Alexander
199cbd6	Alice Miller writes that the child who suppresses his own feelings in order to accomodate a parent has been, in a sense, abandoned. 'Later, when these feelings of being deserted begin to emerge in the analysis of the adult, they are accompanied by such intensity of pain and despair that it is quite clear that these people could not have survived so much pain. That would only have been possible in an empathic, attentive environment, and this they lacked. [as quoted by Alice Miller]' She also says that the mother who requires accommodation from her child is just trying to get what her own mother refused her.	mothers	Alison Bechdel
aed2b97	Maybe the mother manages to be a mirror only part of the time. In such 'tantalizing' cases, some babies learn to withdraw their own needs when the mother's are evident.	mirror mothers	Alison Bechdel
8128b6f	I guess I felt like I'd failed her [by throwing up]. She had so many demands on her...The one thing she needed from me was that I not need anything from her [Bechdel's mother].	mothers needs	Alison Bechdel
97ab231	But, Jocelyn, if I really were all those things [good, kind, talented, hard working, open to change, and adorable]... ...I would die.' I wasn't sure what I meant by this, but it suddenly struck me as the truth. 'Because you'd rather die than feel anger at your mother for not giving you what you needed?	mothers needs	Alison Bechdel
3cff712	She is like a mathematical equation, always there and impossible to disprove.	mothers parents	Jeanette Winterson
3ac1e83	Journeyman stared at Grimm as though Grimm had just suggested that the engineer should prostitute his mother to pirates.	mothers prostitutes	Jim Butcher
bccf5b9	She was her own Enigma Code and me and my dad were not Bletchley Park.	mothers mysteries relationships understanding	Jeanette Winterson
52cdaa1	"Pets are almost always fatal, to oneself or to them. It is the curse of possession or motherhood. Mothers ruin their children, choke them like ivy. Dog-lovers steal the souls of their dogs and lose something in exchange. There is an essay on this subject by (I think) Stella Benson called "A Firefly to Steer By." Everybody ought to read it." --	animals friendship motherhood mothers pets	T.H. White
3b341ac	I thank my mother (Ma, you're only second cause you got the dedication), who used to make me write essays whenever I got into trouble, explaining exactly what I'd done and why I'd done it.	mothers mothers-and-sons parenting	Ta-Nehisi Coates
806f87f	The problem, the only problem, is my mother. And she is the one of course that I am trying to get; it is to reach her that this whole journey has been undertaken. With what purpose? To mark her off, to describe, to illumine, to celebrate, to get rid, of her; and it did not work, for she looms too close, just as she always did. She is heavy as always, she weighs everything down, and yet she is indistinct, her edges melt and flow. Which means she has stuck to me as close as ever and refused to fall away, and I could go on and on and on, applying what skills I have, using what tricks I know, and it would always be the same.	mothers	Alice Munro
60b60ae	Its quietness was the quietness of strength. And the eyes were those of one who had walked through many a dark valley without flinching.	emotional-strength mothers staying-strong	Madeleine Brent

I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.

feminism hate love marriage married-life matrimony men mothers psychology relationships sons women

Martha Gellhorn

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"How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Coraline. "I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave." "Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline. "Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back."

humor mothers

Neil Gaiman

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Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.

mothers

Audrey Niffenegger

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The best love in the world, is the love of a man. The love of a man who came from your womb, the love of your son! I don't have a daughter, but maybe the love of a daughter is the best, too. I am first and foremost me, but right after that, I am a mother. The best thing that I can ever be, is me. But the best gift that I will ever have, is being a mother.

inspirational inspirational-quotes inspiring love mother motherhood mothers mothers-and-sons real-love sons-and-mothers the-best-gift the-greatest-gift the-love-of-a-son true-love

C. JoyBell C.

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Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.

activist aging beautiful-personatlity beautiful-soul charity communicators community compassion empathetic fathers friendships givers giving-heart helping-out homeless-tent-community inner-beauty inspiration inspirational jealousy judgement loving marine-life-conservation medical-missions mothers motivators openess outward-beauty people-of-action perspectives philosophy prayer real-people reflection rescuers search-and-rescue service takers tender time true-beauty truth vanity writing

Shannon L. Alder

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"Does your ma know you're this silly?" she demanded tartly. He nodded, comically sad. "The few gray hairs she has on her head are my doing. But" -- with an exaggerated change of mood -- "I send her plenty of money, so she can pay to have them dyed!" "I hope she beat you as a child," Onua grumbled."

mothers

Tamora Pierce

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The big difference between my mom and me-- besides the fact that she is dead normal and I'm a magic-handling freak-- is that she's the real thing. She may have a slight problem seeing other people's points of view, but she's about it. She's a brass-bound bitch because she believes she knows best. I'm a brass-bound bitch because I don't want anyone getting close enough to find out what a whiny little knot of naked nerve endings I really am.

magic mothers

Robin McKinley

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My mother always said 'Don't bother other people.' I think that's good advice.

life mothers

Amy Sedaris

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I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.

mothers people

Jodi Picoult

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"And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation."

concepts daughters family fear heritage hope ideas immigration joy language luck mothers perception tradition women

Amy Tan

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She was a monster, but she was my monster.

monsters mothers

Jeanette Winterson

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"Good wombs have borne bad sons." -- (Miranda, I:2)"

descent heritage mothers sons the-tempest

William Shakespeare

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Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don't want their kids... but when you look more closely, you realize that they're doing those kids a favor. They're just trying to give them a better life.

mothers

Jodi Picoult

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In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it.

mothers

Jonathan Safran Foer

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There's nothing like your mother's sympathetic voice to make you want to burst into tears.

motherhood mothers parents parents-and-children sympathy

Sophie Kinsella

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Right, except I'm not going to lie to my mom, because what kind of bastard lies to his own mother?

mothers

John Green

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Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.

guilt mothers sacrifice

Milan Kundera

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But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.

mothers mothers-love

Mitch Albom

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Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you.

louisa-may-alcott mothers

Louisa May Alcott

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A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

mothers simple

Amy Tan

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I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.

mothers

Nella Larsen

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"She was not, herself, hugely in favor of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn't exactly . Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they'd been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they'd got the label which said "mother", everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said "child"..."

motherhood mothers

Terry Pratchett

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Mom had the kind of love for her that you could feel, like it was part of the atmosphere

love mothers

Peter Abrahams

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It's the child who's supposed to cry, and the mom who makes it all better, not the other way around, which is why mothers will move heaven and earth to hold it together in front of their own kids.

jodi-picoult mothers

Jodi Picoult

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I always feel sad for the girl that I was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me. She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. She tended to me. She administrated me.

mothers

Gillian Flynn

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Billy covered his head with his blanket. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward - always got much sicker until she went away. It wasn't that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality. She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high school education. She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone through so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.

depression mothers

Kurt Vonnegut

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If you want to be treated like a mother, act like one.

mothers parenting

Jeannette Walls

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And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate.

janie men mothers

Zora Neale Hurston

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My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.

memory metaphor mothers

Vladimir Nabokov

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Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that the small flowered pattern was only a little lighter gray than the background. The dress came down to her ankles, and he strong, broad, bare feet moved quickly and deftly over the floor. Her thin, steel-gray hair was gathered in a sparse wispy knot at the back of her head. Strong, freckled arms were bare to the elbow, and her hands were chubby and delicate, like those of a plump little girl. She looked out into the sunshine. Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.

fear grace mothers

John Steinbeck

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"I love you," was his reply. "I make myself keep on loving you, despite what you do. I've got to love you. We all have to love you, and believe in you, and think you are looking out for our best interests. But look at us, Momma, and really see us." --

best-interests despite faith family love mothers replies see sight trust

V.C. Andrews

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"You will like her," he persisted. "Egad, she's after your own heart, maman! She shot me in the arm." "Voyons, do you think that is what I like?"

georgian mothers romance

Georgette Heyer Devil's Club

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Mothers were much too sharp. They were like dogs. Buster always sensed when anything was out of the ordinary, and so did mothers. Mothers and dogs both had a kind of second sight that made them see into people's minds and know when anything unusual was going on.

mothers sense sharp

Enid Blyton

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The clocks were striking midnight and the rooms were very still as a figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlid here, settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter.

louisa-may-alcott mothers

Louisa May Alcott

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...she rejoiced as only mothers can in the good fortunes of their children.

jo-s-boys louisa-may-alcott mothers

Louisa May Alcott

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I think this power of living in our children is one of the sweetest things in the world...

jo-s-boys louisa-may-alcott mothers

Louisa May Alcott

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That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

irony life mothers people

Nick Hornby

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"The Patrician took a sip of his beer. "I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."

evil existentialism mothers patrician understanding

Terry Pratchett

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Some women just aren't cut out to be mothers, and unfortunately it had taken Susanna three kids to realize she was one of them.

logan mothers reality susanna

Kelley Armstrong

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When my friends began to have babies and I came to comprehend the heroic labor it takes to keep one alive, the constant exhausting tending of a being who can do nothing and demands everything, I realized that my mother had done all of these things for me before I remembered. I was fed; I was washed; I was clothed; I was taught to speak and given a thousand other things, over and over again, hourly, daily, for years. She gave me everything before she gave me nothing.

babies childhood children family family-relationships motherhood mothering mothers

Rebecca Solnit

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This is the role of the mother. And in that visit I really saw clearly, for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and also cuddles... but because in an interesting and and maybe an eerie and other worldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known.

mothers

Maya Angelou

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"NOTHING HAS EVER LOOKED LIKE THAT EVER IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY," he said. His enthusiasm was adorable. I couldn't resist leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. "Just so you know, I'm right here," Mom said. "Sitting next to you. Your mother. Who held your hand as you took your first infantile steps." "It's friendly," I reminded her, turning to kiss her on the cheek. "Didn't feel too friendly," Gus mumbled just loud enough for me to hear. When surprised and excited and innocent Gus emerged from Grand Gesture Metaphorically Inclined Augustus, I literally could not resist."

hilarious mothers

John Green

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Most young men are such bores. They haven't lived long enough to learn that they are not the wonders to the world they are to their mothers.

mothers mothers-and-sons sons young-men

L.M. Montgomery

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She never called her son by any name but John; 'love' and 'dear', and such like terms, were reserved for Fanny.

funny-and-random mothers names sobriquet sons

Elizabeth Gaskell

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The best thing she was, was her children.

motherhood mothers

Toni Morrison

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"For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling "vaguely guilty."

mothers neglect old-age parents sentimentality

William S. Burroughs

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Dan clung to her in speechless gratitude, feeling the blessedness of mother love, -- that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it.

louisa-may-alcott mothers

Louisa May Alcott

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When Jordan was a baby he sat on top of me much as a fly rests on a hill of dung. And I nourished him as a hill of dung nourishes a fly, and when he had eaten his fill he left me. Jordan... I should have named him after a stagnant pond and then I could have kept him, but I named him after a river and in the flood-tide he slipped away.

children mothers rivers

Jeanette Winterson

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(Just to give you an idea, Proust's reply was 'To be separated from Mama.') I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish. In the lower depths come enforced idleness, sexual boredom, and/or impotence. At the highest pitch, the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child.

children death fear friends idleness impotence misery mothers proust proust-questionnaire sex

Christopher Hitchens

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...A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place. She teaches you the nature of happiness: what is the right amount, what is too much, and the kind that makes you want more of what is bad for you. A mother helps her baby flex her first feelings of pleasure. She teaches her when to later exercise restraint, or to take squealing joy in recognizing the fluttering leaves of the gingko tree, to sense a quieter but more profound satisfaction in chancing upon an everlasting pine. A mother enables you to realize that there are different levels of beauty and therein lie the sources of pleasure, some of which are popular and ordinary, and thus of brief value, and others of which are difficult and rare, and hence worth pursuing.

mothers pleasure

Amy Tan

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Mothers are urgently trying to tell something to their daughters, and this urgency is precisely what repels their daughters, forcing them to turn away. Mothers are left stranded, madly holding a lump of London clay, some grass, some white tubers, a dandelion, a fat worm passing the world through itself.

daughters family generations life london love mothers mothers-and-daughters repel urgency

Zadie Smith

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But can I say, now that she is dead, long dead that I only half believed in her. I wanted, I needed her to revolt. I know, revolutions take vast energy like volcanic eruptions. I know. And the sick must husband their resources even as they are resourceful for their husbands. But I couldn't help wanting for her, couldn't help the feeling that she'd given in, that she had measured out with coffee spoons what it was that she might ask of life and having found it lacking, tragically, gapingly lacking, had decided none-the-less to accept her modest share. I wanted her ignoble, irresponsible, unreasonable, petty, grasping, fucking greedy for the lot of it, jostling and spitting and clawing for every grain of life.

anger daughters mothers women-s-roles

Claire Messud - The Woman Upstairs

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I do not understand what makes mothers think they are walking-talking thermometers.But I think somewhere during the process of giving birth and changing diapers, they actually begin to belive they have this supernatural sense.

mothers supernatural

Melody Carlson

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I'd wrestled against the inner voice of my mother, the voice of caution, of duty, of fear of the unknown, the voice that said the world was dangerous and safety was always the first measure and that often confused pleasure with danger, the mother who had, when I'd moved to the city, sent me clippings about young women who were raped and murdered there, who elaborated on obscure perils and injuries that had never happened to her all her life, and who feared mistakes even when the consequences were minor. Why go to Paradise when the dishes aren't done? What if the dirty dishes clamor more loudly than Paradise?

coming-of-age family family-relationships motherhood mothers

Rebecca Solnit

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If my mother's intention in whole or in part was to ensure that I never had to suffer any indignity or embarrassment for being a Jew, then she succeeded well enough. And in any case there were enough intermarriages and 'conversions' on both sides of her line to make me one of those many hybrids who are to be found distributed all over the known world. And, as someone who doesn't really believe that the human species is subdivided by 'race,' let alone that a nation or nationality can be defined by its religion, why should I not let the whole question slide away from me? Why--and then I'll stop asking rhetorical questions--did I at some point resolve that, in whatever tone of voice I was asked 'Are you a Jew?' I would never hear myself deny it?

intermarriage jews mothers nationality race religion religious-conversions rhetorical-questions

Christopher Hitchens

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This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there's someone else to do the housework.

mothers

Ben Aaronovitch

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"I'm a mother," said her mother, in her foodless flat where the dust did not dare to settle, "and I know what I know."

mothers

Neil Gaiman

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And mother-like, Mrs. Jo forgot the threatened chastisement in tender lamentations over the happy scapegrace...

louisa-may-alcott mothers

Louisa May Alcott

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What thumbsuckers we all are...when it comes to mothers.

margaret-atwood mothers

Margaret Atwood

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All suspects should be given the chance to telephone their lawyers or their mothers, and it would not be surprising if they chose to call their mothers. After all, your mother is fall more likely to believe in your innocence than your lawyer.

lawyers mothers

Alexander McCall Smith

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And eventually in that house where everyone, even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies, finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the roof of his mouth, where even the sons of the house have to go into the cornfield with the rickshaw boy to joke about whores and compare the length of their members and whisper furtively about dreams of being film directors (Hanif's dream, which horrifies his dream-invading mother, who believes the cinema to be an extension of the brothel business), where life has been transmuted into grotesquery by the irruption into it of history, eventually in the murkiness of the underworld he cannot help himself, he finds his eyes straying upwards, up along delicate sandals and baggy pajamas and past loose kurta and above the dupatta, the cloth of modesty, until eyes meet eyes, and then

history mothers movies penises sexuality silence

Salman Rushdie

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"Hideo," said my mother, in the terrifying way women have of passing without interval from one subject to another because they have them all present in their mind at once, "you haven't found any kind of relationship?" --

mothers women

Ursula K. Le Guin

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You come from your mauma, you sleep in the bed with her till you're near twenty years grown, and you still don't know what haunches in the dark corners of her.

mothers secrets

Sue Monk Kidd

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And her laugh was enough to make you want to kick over what you were doing and follow her down the street.

laughter mothers

Donna Tartt

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Being a good mother is being a hero. Right?

mothers

Francesca Lia Block

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Outside in the sun the Holy Mother stood on her pedestal in the garden, sorry but unsympathetic. The usual position of mothers.

mothers sympathy the-lacuna

Barbara Kingsolver

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God, He didn't write the scripts for the puny little players down here. We wrote them ourselves-with each day we lived, each word we spoke, each thought we etched on our brains. And Momma had written her script, too. And a sorry one it was.

down-here each-day god life living mothers players scripts speaking spoke spoken-words thought written

V.C. Andrews

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We all have to love you, and believe in you, and think you are looking out for our best interests. But look at us, Momma, and really see us.

look looking love mothers parents see sight trust

V.C. Andrews

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Bertie stared at his mother. She spoils things, he thought. All she ever does is spoil things. He had not started this conversation, and it was not his fault that they were now talking about Grey Owl. He sounded rather a nice man to Bertie. Any why should he not dress up in feathers and live in the forests if that was what he wanted to do? It was typical of his mother to try to spoil Grey Owl's fun.

mothers

Alexander McCall Smith

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Have I been conditioned to believe that if I am not solicitous, if I am not forthcoming, if I am not a never-ending cornicopia of entertaining delights, they will take their collections of milk-bottle tops and their mangy one-eared teddy bears and go away into the woods by themselves to play snipers? Probably. What my mother thinks was merely cute may have been lethal.

cuteness men-and-women mothering mothers mothers-and-daughters

Margaret Atwood

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Have I been conditioned to believe that if I am not solicitous, if I am not forthcoming, if I am not a never-ending cornicopia of entertaining delights, they will take their collections of milk-bottle tops and their mangy one-eared teddy bears and go away into the woods by themselves to play snipers? Probably. What my mother things was merely cute may have been lethal.

entertaining mothering mothers mothers-and-daughters solicitous well-behaved-women

Margaret Atwood

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I doubt you would recognize an adventure of any sort if it came right up and bit you on the a--- Mother! I was going to say arm.

humorous-quotations mothers

Victoria Alexander

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Alice Miller writes that the child who suppresses his own feelings in order to accomodate a parent has been, in a sense, abandoned. 'Later, when these feelings of being deserted begin to emerge in the analysis of the adult, they are accompanied by such intensity of pain and despair that it is quite clear that these people could not have survived so much pain. That would only have been possible in an empathic, attentive environment, and this they lacked. [as quoted by Alice Miller]' She also says that the mother who requires accommodation from her child is just trying to get what her own mother refused her.

mothers

Alison Bechdel

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Maybe the mother manages to be a mirror only part of the time. In such 'tantalizing' cases, some babies learn to withdraw their own needs when the mother's are evident.

mirror mothers

Alison Bechdel

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I guess I felt like I'd failed her [by throwing up]. She had so many demands on her...The one thing she needed from me was that I not need anything from her [Bechdel's mother].

mothers needs

Alison Bechdel

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But, Jocelyn, if I really were all those things [good, kind, talented, hard working, open to change, and adorable]... ...I would die.' I wasn't sure what I meant by this, but it suddenly struck me as the truth. 'Because you'd rather die than feel anger at your mother for not giving you what you needed?

mothers needs

Alison Bechdel

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She is like a mathematical equation, always there and impossible to disprove.

mothers parents

Jeanette Winterson

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Journeyman stared at Grimm as though Grimm had just suggested that the engineer should prostitute his mother to pirates.

mothers prostitutes

Jim Butcher

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She was her own Enigma Code and me and my dad were not Bletchley Park.

mothers mysteries relationships understanding

Jeanette Winterson

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"Pets are almost always fatal, to oneself or to them. It is the curse of possession or motherhood. Mothers ruin their children, choke them like ivy. Dog-lovers steal the souls of their dogs and lose something in exchange. There is an essay on this subject by (I think) Stella Benson called "A Firefly to Steer By." Everybody ought to read it." --

animals friendship motherhood mothers pets

T.H. White

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I thank my mother (Ma, you're only second cause you got the dedication), who used to make me write essays whenever I got into trouble, explaining exactly what I'd done and why I'd done it.

mothers mothers-and-sons parenting

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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The problem, the only problem, is my mother. And she is the one of course that I am trying to get; it is to reach her that this whole journey has been undertaken. With what purpose? To mark her off, to describe, to illumine, to celebrate, to get rid, of her; and it did not work, for she looms too close, just as she always did. She is heavy as always, she weighs everything down, and yet she is indistinct, her edges melt and flow. Which means she has stuck to me as close as ever and refused to fall away, and I could go on and on and on, applying what skills I have, using what tricks I know, and it would always be the same.

mothers

Alice Munro

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Its quietness was the quietness of strength. And the eyes were those of one who had walked through many a dark valley without flinching.

emotional-strength mothers staying-strong

Madeleine Brent