Mothering Quotes (page 13)
Each person is made of five different elements, she told me. Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always critized for his cigarette habit and who always shouted back that she should feel guilty that he didn't let my mother speak her mind. Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people's ideas, unable to stand on your own. This was like my Auntie An-mei. Too much water and you flowed in too many different directions. like myself.
Amy Tan
Even his highly emotional Italian mother didn't believe that true love could blossom overnight. Like his brothers and sisters-in-law, she wanted nothing more for him than to marry and start a family, but if he showed up at her doorstep and said that he'd met someone two days ago and knew she was the one for him, his mother would smack him with a broom, curse in Italian, and drag him to church, sure that he had some serious sins that needed confessing.
Nicholas Sparks
I'm a survivor. I was thinking about what you said, and you're absolutely right - I have to let go to continue. This devastating news is not going to slow me down. I'm my own person. I always have been. I've never believed in those people who blame everything on their parents - you know, I'm a fuck-up because my father was a fuck-up. Or I'm a drunk because my mother was an alcoholic. So my father was a hit man? Maybe. So he murdered my mother? Maybe. I don't know any of these things for a...
Jackie Collins
The little boy had wandered away from his mother, tacking across the grass to the play structure. His mother watched him go, proud, tickled, unaware that every time they toddled away from you, they came back a little different, ten seconds older and nearer to the day when they left you for good. Pearl divers in training, staying under a few seconds longer every time.
Michael Chabon
Slowly, my mother returned to us. She began to clean and cook and preserve some food I brought in for winter. People traded us or payed money for her medical remedies. One day, i heard her singing. Prim was thrilled to have her back but i kept watching, waiting for her to disappear on us again. I didn't trust her. And some small gnarled place inside of me hated her for her weakness, for her neglect, for the months she had put us through. Prim forgave her, but I had taken a step back from my...
Suzanne Collins
This is the autumn of wonders, yet every day, every single day, I go back to that burned afternoon in August when T. Ray left. I go back to that one moment when I stood in the driveway with small rocks and clumps of dirt around my feet and looked back at the porch. And there they were. All these mothers. I have more mothers than any eight girls off the street. They are the moons shining over me.
Sue Monk Kidd
A new degree of anger came over him. What did it all matter? What did it matter if the mother talked Polish and cried in labour, if this child were stiff with resistance, and crying? Why take it to heart? Let the mother cry in labour, let the child cry in resistance, since they would do so. Why should he fight against it, why resist? Let it be, if it were so. Let them be as they were, if they insisted.
David Herbert Lawrence
The mother memories that are closest to my heart are the small gentle ones that I have carried over from the days of my childhood. They are not profound, but they have stayed with me through life, and when I am very old, they will still be near . . . Memories of mother drying my tears, reading aloud, cutting cookies and singing as she did, listening to prayers I said as I knelt with my forehead pressed against her knee, tucking me in bed and turning down the light. They have carried me...
Margaret Sanger