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Mother Quotes

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Mother Quotes

“In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.”

People Knows Writing Has Beens Mother Term Careers Influence Huge Grandmother My Grandmother Supportive Writing Life

Author:Tea Obreht

“My parents were very supportive and always encouraged us. My father was a gentle, nice man. My mother was quite a colourful character and a keen reader who encouraged me to write.”

Men Writing Character Mother Father Parent Nice Reader Gentle Supportive Colorful Nice Man

Author:Alexander McCall Smith

“Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it.”

Way Writing Inspiration Mother Knowing Doubt Wonderful Storyteller

Author:Elizabeth Strout

“A cardinal rule of writing is never interrupt yourself to explain something. If you must bring up an obscure topic, drop informative hints about it as you go along so that you don't end up with the entire explanation all in one place. This keeps you from skidding to a stop and sounding teacherish. Otherwise it's better to omit the obscure topic altogether, or as mothers might put it: if you can't say it interestingly, don't say it at all.”

Ifs Writing Ends Might Mother Explanation Obscure Topics Hints Cardinals Informative Cardinal Rules

Author:Florence King

“It's hard to say when my interest in writing began, or how. My mother read to my sister and me every night, and we always loved playing make-believe games. I had a well-primed imagination. I didn't start thinking about writing as a serious pursuit, a career I could have, until after college.”

Thinking Writing Believe Wells Hard Mother Night Games Interest Imagination Careers College Serious Pursuit My Sister Every Night Make Believe Playing Make Believe

Author:Sara Zarr

“That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.”

Writing Past Mother Realizing Son Recalls

Book:Let the Great World Spin: A Novel

Source: Let the Great World Spin: A Novel

“My mother always told me if you write about life, you will always be in the game. Just don't write songs write life. I decided to take her up on that.”

Ifs Writing Mother Song Games Decided

Author:R. Kelly

“When a poet writes a poem, meaning arises - because the poet is not alone; he has created something. When a dancer dances, meaning arises. When a mother gives birth to a child, meaning arises. Left alone, cut off from everything else, isolated like an island, you are meaningless. Joined together you are meaningful. The bigger the whole, the bigger is the meaning.”

Giving Writing Children Whole Motivational Together Mother Left Cutting Poet Birth Bigger Meaningful Arise Islands Dancer Meaningless Isolated Not Alone Left Alone

Author:Rajneesh

“My books are based on the "what if" principle. "What if you became invisible?" or "What if you did change into your mother for one day?" I then take it from there. Each book takes several months in the long process of writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting, and each has its own set of problems. The one thing I dislike about the writing process is the sometimes-loneliness of it all. Readers only get to see the glamour part of a bound book, not some of the agonizing moments one has while constructing it.”

“I don't write about the intimate details of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and my mother and my father because it's not right to, for me.”

Writing Mother Father Details Intimate Uncles Cousin Aunt My Cousin Aunts And Uncles

Author:Anne Lamott

“When I was a kid, the punishment I disliked the most was writing sentences. My mother loved to make me record my transgressions--always a minimum of five hundred times--and she even bought special spiral notebooks for me to fill up.... No matter how many notebooks I went through, there was always another one waiting in the kitchen drawer.”

Writing Matter Kids Mother Waiting Records Five Special Hundred Sentences Punishment Kitchen Minimum Notebook Drawers Spirals Transgression

Book:Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life

Source: Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life

“Someone watches over us when we write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.”

Writing Mother Watches Teacher

Author:Martin Amis

“Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to have to write of virtue.”

Writing Humans Mother Sin Virtue Originals Enterprise Historian Malice Fluid Original Sin Staples Narrators

Book:Schindler's List

Source: Schindler's List

“Writing about the 1950s has given me tremendous respect for my mother's generation.”

Writing Mother Given Generations

Author:Sara Sheridan

“We are told in the Pentateuch, that god, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him.”

Ifs Men Writing Book Lying Mother Father Names Brother Praying Opposites Lust Denied Brutal Savages I Pray Maidens If There Is A God

Book:The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

“Just about everything significant in my life happened after I passed forty. I was a housewife and mother, but yearned to be a writer. I worked at my writing whenever I could snatch a moment, and I assembled several manuscripts. I was just about forty when my first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published. Then a few months later came The Good Earth. My career was launched at last, and it has given me the richest possible satisfaction”

Writing Firsts Moments Earth Lasts Mother Given Careers Novel Happened Wind Months West Satisfaction East Significant Forty Housewife Manuscripts Life Happens Good Earth

Author:Pearl S. Buck

“[On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty pissed off.”

Writing Firsts Children Age Mother Father Alive Poet Eight Mother And Father Pissed Off Odes Dead Mother

Author:Judith Viorst

“It doesn't matter whether the bride or the bridegroom writes the letters of thanks for wedding presents provided that these go out immediately after the arrival of each present and are not in the handwriting of the bride's mother.”

Writing Matter Mother Letters Thanks Brides Arrivals Handwriting Bridegroom

Book:Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding

Source: Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding

“I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call ourselves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me.”

Source: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque, Having Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished But Himself with an Account how He was at Last as Strangely Deliver'd by Pyrates, Written by Himself

“My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me [at age five] by my mother with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts.”

Writing Firsts Bigs Age Mother Given Five Sensible Suggestions My Thoughts Notebook Whining Tablets Stop Whining

Book:We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction

Source: We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction

“you can give it a long name if you like, but I'm an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it's so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes.”

Ifs Men Giving Writing Long Doe Book Mother Names Wit Old Fashioned Holmes Mother Wit

Book:The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries: Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, and Unnatural Death

Source: The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries: Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, and Unnatural Death

“What does it mean to be a used white wife, a mother, a tragic girl writing poems? Sandra Simonds gets into these messy words and then tears them apart. Sometimes with the words of others. And sometimes with poems made from scratch. They aren't all bad, these words. But they aren't all good either. And that is where Mother was a Tragic Girl gets its power. You will at moments be laughing but then you will also at moments just as much be crying. If Antigone was alive and decided to write some poems about the nuclear family, she would write them like Sandra Simonds. These are tough.”

Ifs Writing Mean Doe Made Sometimes Moments Used Mother Girl White Laughing Alive Wife Cry Tears Tough Decided Nuclear Tragic Scratches Messy Antigone Writing Poems Nuclear Families

Author:Juliana Spahr

“Being a mother is the perfect experience for any writer. You learn how to not waste time. The writing hours become incredibly precious and concentrated because the rest of your day is completely packed with diapers, edible liquid foods that look like pooh, tiny bathtubs, and unconditional love.”

Writing Looks Mother Hours Perfect Waste Tiny Unconditional Love Wasting Time Unconditional Liquid Being A Mother Diapers Bathtubs

Author:Chiara Barzini

“My mother used to do all the things that were important to her after midnight. ... Sometimes I'd sneak downstairs and see her knitting, or reading, or writing letters. I'd think of her as a thief, stealing the tail end of the day, the hours nobody else wanted or used.”

Thinking Writing Important Ends Sometimes Wanted Used Mother Reading Hours Letters Stealing The End Of The Day Thieves Tails Midnight Sneak Knitting Reading Or Writing

Author:Marita Golden

“I don't like writing straight-up thrillers. I like writing about families hurled into crisis and danger - soccer moms and regular dads and husbands who might have to rescue their daughters or who are, say, hedge fund managers and have one foot on the sidelines watching their kids and the other in nefarious cover-ups and conspiracies.”

Writing Might Kids Mother Feet Danger Mom Dad Husband Daughter Crisis Managers Soccer Fund Conspiracy Rescue Thrillers About Family Cover Ups Sidelines Straight Up Hedge Fund Soccer Mom

Author:Andrew Gross

“I wanted to write something in a voice that was unique to who I was. And I wanted something that was accessible to the person who works at Dunkin Donuts or who drives a bus, someone who comes home with their feet hurting like my father, someone whos busy and has too many children, like my mother.”

Writing Children Persons Home Wanted Mother Father Voice Hurt Feet Unique Busy Coming Home Bus Donuts Dunkin Donuts

Author:Sandra Cisneros

“I woke up one day and thought: I want to write a book about the history of my body. I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.”

Want Writing Book Body Mother Talking One Day Justify

Author:Paul Auster

“I have sat with the mothers who have lost addicted sons. I have sat with families of kids who have been killed in drug-related gang violence. I have been to the prisons. I have seen the effects. At some point in time, I felt I had to do something other than write a novel about it, that I needed to try to make some sort of contribution, at least try to make some sort of difference in the real world.”

World Writing Trying Has Beens Real Kids Mother Lost Felt Differences Novel Violence Effects Son Needed Drug Prison Sat Related Contribution Real World Gang Gang Violence

Author:Don Winslow

“My mother - my stepmother, really, she herself have been what they call an elocutionist. And she was the one who first encouraged me to write poetry, because she used to read it to us. And then when I began to write when I was nine years old, my first poem was published in the Amsterdam News. I called it "The Graveyard."”

Writing Years Firsts Has Beens Used Mother News Nine Poetry Is Graveyard Nine Years Amsterdam Stepmothers

Author:Ruby Dee

“After I won the Pulitzer, there was this sense of, 'OK, that's enough for you. Now go away.' What I wanted was to keep writing, keep working. But no one would produce anything of mine they didn't think would be as big as ''night, Mother.'”

Thinking Writing Enough Bigs Would Be Wanted Mother Night Produce Mines Going Away Mother Night

Author:Marsha Norman

“When I was 4 years old my mother put me into an early music education school. That's where they taught you perfect pitch and harmony and how to write music and all that. At that time, one of the homeworks was to listen to all the sounds and the noise of a day and transfer that into musical notes.”

Writing Years School Mother Sound Perfect Taught Harmony Notes Musical Noise Homework Transfers Music Education Musical Notes

Author:Yoko Ono

“But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!”

Writing Book Mother Bores

Author:Robert Musil

“Much of the ill-tempered railing against women that has characterized the popular writing of the last two years is a half-heartedattempt to find a way back to a more balanced relationship between our biological selves and the world we have built. So women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.”

World Way Writing Years Two Self Lasts Mother Half Built Ill Two Years Sexism Cake Balanced Being A Mother Scolded Ill Tempered Balanced Relationship

Author:Margaret Mead

“My father said he was going to write to the Jinzhou City Party Committee asking for permission to 'talk about love'...My mother supposed it was a bit like asking permission from the head of the family...the Communist Party was the new patriarch.”

Writing Said Mother Father Bits Party Cities Asking China Communist Permission Committees Communist Party Patriarch Asking Permission

Author:Jung Chang

“Not until Freud's writings became popular did descriptions of infants center on relationships with their mothers. The idea that children have feelings of any lasting importance for their development is a very recent invention (or insight if you wish).”

Ifs Writing Children Ideas Feelings Mother Wish Development Importance Insight Invention Description Lasting Infant

Author:Sandra Scarr

“My father is doing a radio program - classical music. He has a beautiful speaking voice and that's his passion in life, his music. My mother lives in Melbourne and is an avid photographer. She's also started writing for a magazine out there and she submits poems, very funny ones, and articles. In some way or other, my family is always doing something with the media.”

Way Writing Beautiful Mother Passion Father Voice Media Program My Family Photographer Radio Magazines Articles Submit Classical Music Avid Melbourne

Author:Olivia Newton-John

“What writing ROOM taught me was that I know exactly how to be the perfect mother, but I'm not willing to do it for more than ten minutes at a time.”

Knows Writing Mother Perfect Rooms Minutes Taught Willing Ten

Author:Emma Donoghue

“From a very young age my mother persuaded me that I could write for fun, but I had to have a proper job - very good advice.”

Writing Age Jobs Young Mother Fun Advice Very Good Young Age Good Advice

Author:Joanne Harris