264 quotes found
“I don’t think the world should assume that we are all natural mothers. And it does. I don’t think it’s such a big thing anymore, but the idea that you sacrifice everything for your children—it’s a ...”
“Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I'm wearing will never really fit.”
“If it weren't for me, she wouldn't have to take jobs like this. She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar. I felt my guilt like a brand.....”
“There are legions of us, I realized. The mothers who have broken babies, and spend the rest of our lives wondering if we should have spared them. And the mothers who have let their broken babies go...”
“If they would all sleep all the time she wouldn't mind being their mother.”
“Having kids — the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings — is the biggest job anyone can embark on”
“Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child - not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of vio...”
“She was a terrible mother, there was no doubt about it, but she didn't even have the strength to feel guilty.”
“Maybe mothers - consciously or subconsciously - repelled their daughters in different ways.”
“And when she [her daughter] one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends,For I will not have t...”
“- A mother, a real mother with a little child, thinks day and night about the welfare of the little one in her arms. A mother knows what dangers the child will have to encounter as he grows up. She...”
“Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is place in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in...”
“I cannot admit this out loud. In the first place, we are expected to be supermoms these days, instead of admitting that we have flaws. It is tempting to believe that all mothers wake up feeling fre...”
“- It is clear that we have to come down a bit from the high horse of reason on which we enjoy sitting. We have to be simple and take time to think how to make things understandable to the little on...”
“Unfeeling thing that I was, the sensibilities of the maternal heart were Greek and Hebrew to me.”
“I definitely haven’t been in the best place while working on this book, but I can say this much: Where there is pain in this book, it is real pain; where there is anger, it is real anger; where the...”
“I remember at that time I went to the hairdresser's. I did this regularly, but I remember that visit for two particular reasons. The first was that next to me was a young mother with a little girl ...”
“...it was hard to be a mother when you had never been mothered yourself. Your children's needs remind you of your needs. Their pain reminds you of your pain. All of it reminds you of how bad it fel...”
“She has had any number of foals. I yield to her judgement.”
“Motherhood is a vocation like any other. It should be freely chosen, not imposed upon woman.”
