Beth Ann Fennelly Quotes & Sayings

I stopped trying to rank sorrow, realized that the world has sorrow enough for all of us, and when some of it falls to you the best hope you have is letting yourself suffer through it. — Beth Ann Fennelly

When sharing your news, you might come across some disgruntled parent-folk. You know, the kind who snort and say ruefully, "If there's anyplace you want to travel to, go now." Don't let them squelch your joy, dear K: these are the kind of people who never went anywhere before they had babies either. — Beth Ann Fennelly

When you push your stroller past a group of elderly women, you'll see in the turning gladness of their bodies a glimpse of the children they had been, turning toward the tin music of the ice cream van. — Beth Ann Fennelly

But the process of birthing Claire changed what I wanted to write about. It left me feeling betrayed that I'd been unprepared for the pure animal nature of birth. For the first time, I understood myself to be a mammal with a mammal's instincts and desires beneath the veneer of civilization - a mammal just as much as the opossum with its thirteen nipples. — Beth Ann Fennelly

Do you remember in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! when the Grinch is alone on the mountain after plundering the Christmas of the Whos down below, and his heart swells to three times its normal size? That's the other thing that happens when you become a mom. You feel more deeply. You become capable of a raw, scary fullness of emotion that tenderizes the hardened muscle of the heart. And it endangers you. Because you feel for other people's suffering more than you used to, especially for the suffering of children, as if the love you bear for your child is so outsized that it can't be contained but splashes out into the world, your salty tears brimming the salty oceans. — Beth Ann Fennelly

And Lord did I push, for thee more hours
I pushed, I pushed so hard I shat,
Pushed so hard blood vessels burst
in my neck and in my chest, pushed so hard my asshole turned inside-out like a rosebud. — Beth Ann Fennelly

She reads his poems gratefully in her small Mississippi town. It's an undramatic life, yet these past months she seems to have found the intensity he yearns for, This also sounds like bragging, though she doesn't mean it to. If she could, she'd let him bear her secret. She'd let all great men bear it, for s few hours. Then, when she too it back, they'd remember how it feels to be inhabited. — Beth Ann Fennelly

With toddlers around, times are always interesting. — Beth Ann Fennelly

Whether you're explaining where pets go when they die or teaching your child to recycle, your philosophies have ramifications. For the rest of history, echos of your voice will be heard. — Beth Ann Fennelly

But remember that reading provides nourishment for hungers we might not even be aware of. How often have I chosen a book at random and found in it an answer I didn't realize I was seeking. — Beth Ann Fennelly