Motherly Quotes (page 41)
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The most savory grape, the one that produces the wines with best texture and aroma, the sweetest and most generous, doesn't grow in rich soil but in stony land; the plant, with a mother's obstinacy, overcomes obstacles to thrust its roots deep into the ground and take advantage of every drop of water. That, my grandmother explained to me, is how flavors are concentrated in the grape.
Isabel Allende
Only common mortals like the Somervilles have good old rotten hates, dear,’ said her mother. ‘Sir Graham manages to love everybody and wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. Have a bun.’
‘He doesn’t love the Turks,’ said Philippa. ‘He kills them.’
‘That isn’t hate,’ said Kate Somerville. ‘That’s simply hoeing among one’s principles to keep them healthy and neat. I’m sure he would tell you he bears them no personal grudge; and they think they’re going to Paradise anyway, so it does...
Dorothy Dunnett
When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.
Jodi Picoult
It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.
Voltaire
I had paid for my folly and, as a reward, was invited to take part in the nest builder’s performance piece. The script was great.
‘When I bleat here, do you want me to just bleat or to really let go and “bleat, bleat”?’ I asked. ‘I feel like “bleat, bleating,” but if Mother/Destroyer is going to be crawling through the birth canal of concertina wire, I don’t want to steal focus, you know what I mean?
David Sedaris
That was the big joke, wasn't it? The answer to the riddle: There was no one up there in Heaven, making sure the accounts came out right. I'd solved it, hadn't I? Cracked the code? It was all just a joke. The god inside my brother's head was just his disease. My mother had knelt every night and prayed to her own steepled hands. Your baby died because of ... because of no particular reason at all. Your wife left you because you sucked all the oxygen out of the room, so you pretended she was...
Wally Lamb