“We enter into all major relationships with no real clue of where we are going: marriage, birth, friendship. We carry maps we believe are true: our parents' relationship, what it says in the baby books, the landscape of our own childhood. These maps are approximate at best, dangerously misleading at worst.” UnderstandingRelationshipsHistoryAssumptionsDysfunctionPersonal HistoryMothers And Other Monsters Author:Maureen F. McHugh
“We do not want to be haunds, teacher. We just want the haunds to go elsewhere for easy prey.” Life PhilosophyMothers And Other Monsters Author:Maureen F. McHugh
“I don't know why weighing 140 pounds means I'm middle-aged, but it does. It is a magic number. A matronly number. More important than wishing young people would get their hair out of their eyes and more important than thinking Green Day sounds banal and that MTV is too sexist. If I could lose ten pounds, then maybe I could put off middle age for a while. But the thought of dieting, of thinking of food all the time, seems like too much to contemplate.” WeightAgingWeight LossOverweightMiddle AgeGaining WeightMothers And Other Monsters Author:Maureen F. McHugh
“I have all this empty time in front of me. Tonight and tomorrow and the week after and the next month and all down through the years as I never marry and become a dried-up woman. Evenings spent folding paper. Days cleaning someone else's house. Free afternoons spent shopping a bit, stopping in tea shops because my feet hurt. That is what lives are, aren't they? Attempts to fill our time with activity designed to prevent us from realizing that there is no meaning?” LifeTimeMeaningBoredomLivesSpare TimeMothers And Other MonstersFilling Time Author:Maureen F. McHugh
“Gus couldn't handle it when she cried. For the thirty years of their marriage, when she'd had to cry--which was always at night, at least in her memory--she'd gone downstairs after he'd gone to sleep and sat on the couch and cried. She would have liked him to comfort her, but in marriage you learn what other people's limits are. And you learn your own.” RelationshipsMarriageTearsComfortLimitsCryingLimitationsMothers And Other Monsters Author:Maureen F. McHugh
