Megan Mayhew Bergman Quotes & Sayings

Mothers, I believe, intoxicate us. We idolize them and take them for granted. We hate them and blame them and exalt them more thoroughly than anyone else in our lives. We sift through the evidence of their love, reassure ourselves of their affection and its biological genesis. We can steal and lie and leave and they will love us. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

Would there be water shortages? Yes. More starving babies? Unfortunately. Would our quality of life soon be diminished by global warming? Probably. But who, I wondered, but the strongest among us could hold those ideas in their heads and find happiness? Get out of bed in the morning? — Megan Mayhew Bergman

I don't want him to know that people like Louis's mom exist, that people fall into land mines of pain and can't crawl back out. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

Sometimes you didn't know what you were after, I thought. Maybe there was a speck on the horizon and you followed it, hoping for the best. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

Maybe the world had been bad to its great and unusual women. Maybe there wasn't a worthy place for the female hero to live out her golden years, to be celebrated as the men had been celebrated, to take from that celebration what she needed to survive. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

Nothing has topped the way men shake her hand and look her in the eye, what it's like to call a man chickenshit to his face and get away with it, to mean it, to feel free and dominant and in control of your life. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

Imagine: you could say nothing, do nothing, eat nothing, touch nothing, love nothing without the other knowing. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

We are, I think, eager to show mettle we don't yet have. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

I knew I was waiting for someone I didn't understand. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

I want him to know nothing but gentle landings. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

I want to mother the world, I thought. I have so much love.
Then - I have no business being a mother. I am a selfish woman.
Then - I can do this. Millions of women have been mothers.
Then - I feel very alone. I do not know what I'm capable of. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

I wanted, then, to become what I most admired, what now seemed most real to me. I wanted to be that exalted, complicated presence in someone's life, the familiar body, the source of another's existence. But I knew what I wanted was not always what I needed. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

Dolly was the exclamation point in my life. She made me feel things: adoration, anger, frustration. She was always in love and it made her glow. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

I remember thinking that moms were not allowed to be sad, that surely women grew out of sadness by the time they had children. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

I pictured the mother whale, exhausted from labor, pushing her calf up to the skin of the water. The miracle of breath in the face of predation, life in the wake of whaling ships. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

Sometimes it helps to lie. You tell yourself a story, even if you don't know the ending. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

It was a character-building week, a week that thinned my hair, put circles underneath my eyes. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

I'm hungry for you. Old you, new you. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

Worrying about parents is a waste of time. It's your life. Let's have a martini. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

There were no promises, no obligations between living things, she thought. Not even humans. Just raw need hidden by a game of make-believe. — Megan Mayhew Bergman

Power is a funny thing. Sometimes you can just take it. — Megan Mayhew Bergman