264 quotes found
“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 ...”
“But that was long ago. She has long since lost interest in motives, in the details of other women's crimes. Even the hatchet makes its usual sense. A mother who loves her child with all her self is...”
“And the truth is, the ten or twenty minutes I was somebody's mother were black magic. There is nothing I would trade them for. There is no place I would rather have seen.”
“...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.”
“This thing, growing inside and filling her breasts with promise, this thing was the same as her. It matched her better than anything or anyone she'd known.”
“Mothers' bodies are not their own. The happiest ones seem to have forgotten what it is like to want themselves back at all.”
“Know the rules of child rearing!!Rule one: Physical strength!Rule two: Physical strength!There are no rules three or four, but rule five is physical strength!”
“Motherhood is a vocation like any other. It should be freely chosen, not imposed upon woman.”
“Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are.”
“His manners are old-fashioned, the work of a vigilant mother.”
“At first I had not understood Mama. But as I grew older, maybe not wiser, certainly more realistic, I realized she did the best she could. She loved me, in her own way. Not everyone is born to be a...”
“Nettie, it quickly developed, had no gift for mothering. Many women have no gift for it. They mimic the recalled gestures and mannerisms of the women theyve been trained to become and hope for the ...”
“This body. This body Dan wanted to possess, and together they made a baby, asleep right now in the very next room. She tells herself that he's alive, that he's well, though some instinct in her tel...”
“If I had told him the truth long ago, or had danced and drunk and sung more, maybe he would have seen me instead of a dependable, ordinary mother. He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I alw...”
“The LanyardThe other day I was ricocheting slowlyoff the blue walls of this room,moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,when I found mysel...”
“It's true what they say, that a baby gives you a reason to live. But also, a baby is a reason that it is not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.”
“I don't ever want to make the mistake of needing him as much as or more than he needs me. But there's no denying that sometimes, when we sleep together in the dark cavern of the bottom bunk, his bi...”
“Carrie, sitting there over your coffee cup in a wasteland of worn-out silver wedding rings, feeding yourself confections of motherhood like the display cakes in the bakery where you worked- all tri...”
“She goes silent. Ashamed of herself as mothers are when they realize they have passed that point in life when they want more from their daughters than their daughters want from them.”
