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Mothers Quotes

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Mothers Quotes

“Was it possible this one would be a son too? She hoped so, but not because she favored men. Her husband modeled the seriousness, the stoicism, that she hoped her sons would inherit, but she had nothing to teach a daughter. She could teach her to dream—say, to be a painter, as she herself had been trained—and then teach her to let it go. Teach her to cloister herself in dark hallways, admiring how the light fell through the rice-paper doors while knowing that there was no point in putting it on canvas.”

“Alice Miller writes that the child who suppresses his own feelings in order to accomodate a parent has been, in a sense, abandoned. 'Later, when these feelings of being deserted begin to emerge in the analysis of the adult, they are accompanied by such intensity of pain and despair that it is quite clear that these people could not have survived so much pain. That would only have been possible in an empathic, attentive environment, and this they lacked. [as quoted by Alice Miller]' She also says that the mother who requires accommodation from her child is just trying to get what her own mother refused her.”

“She gazed over at her mother and took a deep breath. Perhaps her mother had never shown Abby affection, not really, but she had given her a knack for solitude, with its terrible lurches outward, and its smooth glide back to peace. Abby would toast her for that. It was really the world that was one’s brutal mother, the one that nursed and neglected you, and your own mother was only your sibling in that world. Abby lifted her glass. “May the worst always be behind you. May the sun daily warm your arms.…” She looked down at her cocktail napkin for assistance, but there was only a cartoon of a big-chested colleen, two shamrocks over her breasts. Abby looked back up. God’s word is quick! “May your car always start—” But perhaps God might also begin with tall, slow words; the belly bloat of a fib; the distended tale. “And may you always have a clean shirt,” she continued, her voice growing gallant, public and loud, “and a holding roof, healthy children and good cabbages—and may you be with me in my heart, Mother, as you are now, in this place; always and forever—like a flaming light.”

“There would be, half a million things, I could do, yet I don’t know, what would be so? When I will see you, for the first time, calm, twined in your daddy’s arm, coming towards me, I could do, half a million things- caress your skin, fondle your chin, stroke though your limbs, smoothly touch your lips, and make my silent wishes, for your health and, your intellect. Half a million things, I could do, yet I don’t know, what would be so? When I will see you, for the first time, I could say, half a million things- call you my kid, read a fine script, whisper love in your ears, sing a hymn. Half a million things, I could say, yet I don’t know, what would be so? I fear though, what if I am unable to, do any of this, and all I end up with, is, just a knot of tears, loaded with, some of the most pure prayers, I have ever chaired. Half a million things, I could do and I could say, yet when it happens, little will my practice play. Half a million things, and I wouldn't know, how and where one begins.”

“It helps enormously to have had a loving mother. Mothers can give their daughters permission to love their fathers. Mothers can help their daughters feel good about becoming mothers. Mothers can help daughters learn the value of openness and female friendship, especially when times are bad,”

“Mothers are not simply models of femininity to their daughters but also examples of how a woman reacts to a man. Daughters learn about fathers, and men, not only by being with Dad but also by observing their parent's marital relationship-- or its unraveling. When mothers and fathers are supportive or each other, it makes each of their paternal jobs infinitely easier. And parents who cannot bear being in one another's presence reveal as much, if not more, to a child about romantic love as anything the mother or father might say.”

“A girl's sense of her womanly self depends only in part on how closely she has followed her mother's example in attire and actions, or how much she loves or hates or respects her. It is from both parents that a girl gains her basic identity.”

“For all children, mothers are their first love, their first acquaintance with intimacy, touch, warmth, tenderness, sustenance. Infancy is a conspiracy between mothers and their babies, a bond that fathers can only helplessly witness, denied the profound pleasure and pain of giving birth.”

“when you allow that man. to walk through your children. plant his feet. in their veins. hold their voices. necks. bodies. inside his violence. you are no longer a mother. when you give him the key to that door. because you need to be loved by someone. you have seasoned them for the wolf. burned their childhood into a fantasy. it’s going to take a third of their lives. all the courage. from their cells to their hair. to learn the alchemetic formula that turns that kind of betrayal. a demothering. soft. liveable. – before you get that key made”

“If I had still been an immortal, I might have flirted with her myself. But I was now a sixteen-year-old boy. My mortal form was working its way upon my state of mind. I saw Sally Jackson as a mom—a fact that both consternated and embarrassed me. I thought about how long it had been since I had called my own mother. I should probably take her to lunch when I got back to Olympus.”

“I missed my one true friend, my mother. She and I were close in a way I don't think many other mothers and daughters were. I slept beside her every night of my childhood: so near to her back, I could probably sketch the constellation of moles and freckles on her skin there. When I was a very little girl, every morning I would wake before her and arrange myself so that when she woke, we were eye-to-eye. I miss her, with a never-ending ache that I did not think was possible, that crowds out any other feeling and certainly all reason, and any good sense.”

“My rugrats give me gifts that say "#1 Mom" on them and I'm like, bwhahahahaha, joke's on you, I'm more like the #1,297,279 Mom. But they truly think I'm the best mom on earth. And that's all that matters.”

“We really had a close netted structure to rely on for anything, you could have gone by anyone house and get something to eat. Whatever they were eating, they would’ve fed you, and all the mothers would’ve treated you just like they treated their own. What the gang also did, it provided some level of protection for a lot of the working adults in the neighborhood. They knew that their houses were safe, when they went out to work and didn’t have to worry about anyone breaking in to their homes. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members”