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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“When my sister was released from the mental hospital, she came to live with me in the tilting and crumbling one-bedroom house I'd bought with the small amount of money I inherited when our parents died. She arrived one afternoon unannounced in a taxi. She must have known instinctively that I'd take her in. I don't know how or why they released her. Probably due to overcrowding, and they had her scratch her name on a form then pushed her out the door. Or maybe she just slipped away when no one was looking (who'd notice in a place like that?)--she never did tell me and I didn't ask her. I was so happy to have her with me again that the last thing I wanted to do was break the spell by letting reality intrude. Ever since they'd dragged her away weeping with laughter and reaching out for me with our parents' blood still coating her hands with shiny red gloves, I'd felt amputated, like they'd pulled her kicking and screaming and insane out of my guts.”

“When my skin had gone back to its even tone I slept with another man and discovered, my hands lying awkwardly on the sheet at either side of me, that I had forgotten what to do with them. I'm responsible and an adult again, full time. What remains is that my sensation thermostat has been thrown out of whack; it's been years and sometimes I wonder whether my body will ever again register above lukewarm.”

“When my son Lowell was eight years old, one day he and I had just finished playing. Tired and exhausted, we were lying on the bed talking. He sat up in the bed and started to trace his finger over the scar behind my neck. He asked me with concern in his voice, ‘Daddy, how you got this cut behind your neck?’ I hesitated for a while, wondering how much I should tell him, or if I should even tell him at all. I decided to tell him some of it, leaving out the part about the shooting. So I told him, ‘I got that from fighting with one of my friends.’ Lowell didn’t respond right away. After a moment of silence and tracing his finger over the scar, my son said something to me that I had never even considered up to that point. He said, ‘Daddy, your friend tried to kill you!”

“When my son Nick was five years old, he was sitting at the kitchen bar while I prepared dinner. In typical busy mother fashion, I was multitasking—cooking, cleaning, running the laundry, answering the phone, and attempting to listen to what he had to say.”

“When my son speaks of playing sports, I've always told him: playing on the team is great, but aspire to be the guy who owns the team. I've always told my son: most of the guys on the team will end up bankrupt with bum knees, but not the guy who owns that franchise.”

“When my son was a mere three months old, I started working at the State Department. I was not only the youngest Assistant Secretary of State but I was also a breastfeeding mother. I'm the first to admit that this felt crazy at times, and the balancing act is never ever easy. But my two kids are the most wonderful things that have ever happened to me.”

“When my son was a teenager, he would use the ‘poker face’ tactic when I was lecturing, nagging, or suggesting. As a parent, it was maddening because I could not read his reactions! His stoicism would sometimes deflate my efforts or make me surrender in laughter, changing the subject all together.”

“When my son, James, was doing homework for school, he would have five or six windows open on his computer, Instant Messenger was flashing continuously, his cell phone was constantly ringing, and he was downloading music and watching the TV over his shoulder. I don’t know if he was doing any homework, but he was running an empire as far as I could see, so I didn’t really care.”

“When my sons arrived in the family, their legal status was not ambiguous at all. They were our kids. But their wants and affections were still atrophied by a year in the orphanage. They didn't know that flies on their faces were bad. They didn't know that a strange man feeding them their first scary gulps of solid food wasn't a torturer. Life in the cribs alone must have seemed to them like freedom. That's what I was missing about the biblical doctrine of adoption. Sure it's glorious in the long run. But it sure seems like hell in the short run.”

“When my TV show, 'Sports Jobs with Junior Seau,' assigned me to be a 'Sports Illustrated' reporter for a weekend, I didn't realize I'd have to squeeze it in around another sports job. I had planned to retire from the NFL to enjoy the cushy lifestyle of a full-time reality TV star, but I wound up getting run over by a bull.”