Quotes & Sayings About A Bad Mother

I'm trying to tell him everything will be all right, but how can I say it with a straight face? My son's no idiot. He knows when I'm lying.
The medicine won't taste bad.
The bath is not hot.
Daddy will be safe.
Lies. — Suzanne Hayes

CHILD: Mummy, who was Hitler? MOTHER: Hitler? CHILD: Yeah. Who was he? MOTHER: Erm, he was a very bad man from a long time ago. CHILD: Oh. How bad? MOTHER: He was like ... he was like Voldemort. CHILD: Oh! That's really, really bad. Mother: Yes. CHILD: (Pause) So, did Harry Potter kill Hitler, too? — Jen Campbell

Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns. — Tom Spanbauer

Whenever you're taking advantage of all those rules you make in your favor, you're turning me inside out and when that happens, you're not white and I'm not black, or poor, or one bad mood on the part of some racist asshole away from being unemployed. In your garden, I'm Eve, and when you take me shoe shopping, I'm Cinderella. On top of your mountain, I feel like Mother Earth. In your house, I'm a lady. You dress me like one and you insist others treat me like one. — Eden Connor

My mother was terribly invasive, all in the name of psychiatric honesty. It was a bad thing in some ways, but I do think it had the effect of making me interested in 'the truth' as a writer - more than beauty, more than having a shapely story. — Edmund White

I think tonight's the night I will hang Howard W. Campbell Jr., for crimes against himself... They say that a hanging man hears gorgeous music. Too bad that I, like my father, unlike my musical mother, am tone-deaf. All the same I hope the tune that I'm about to hear is not Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

This is a very bad book you're writing," I said to myself behind my leaks.

"I know," I said.

"You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did," I said.

"I know," I said.

There in the cocktail lounge, peering out through my leaks at a world of my own invention, I mouthed this word: schizophrenia. The sound and appearance of the word had fascinated me for many years. It sounded and looked to me like a human being sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

go on hating myself forever for all the terrible things I'd done. I sank down on the toilet, sharp mental pictures of other temper fits filling my mind. I saw my anger, clenched my fists against my rage. I wouldn't be any good for anything if I couldn't change. My poor mother, I thought. She believes in me. Not even she knows how bad I am. Misery engulfed me in darkness. "If you don't do this for me, God, I've got no place else to go." At one point I'd slipped out of the bathroom long enough to grab a Bible. Now I opened it and began — Ben Carson

In truth, this was a bad thing that Yan Chang had done, telling me my mother's story. Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth. After — Amy Tan

My voice was a bare rasp of fear. "In the weaving room, the women say it's never been this bad before ... "
"They always say that when things get difficult," she answered softly. Then she sat up suddenly as though coming fully awake. Reaching down, she took my chin in her hand and tipped my face to look up at hers. "Remember, Gwen, no matter who says what, the important thing is to understand what needs to be done, and then do it. No matter how hard it is, or how much pain you feel. It's as simple as that, really. Once you know what you have to do, you just do it. — Persia Woolley

If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children. — Ayelet Waldman

Admitting that this job isn't always easy doesn't make somebody a bad mother. At least, it shouldn't. We're all on this ride together. We are not the first ones to ever accidentally tell our children to shut up, or wonder - just for a moment - what it would be like if we'd never had children. We aren't the first mothers to feel overwhelmed and challenged and not entirely fulfilled by motherhood. And we certainly won't be the last. Nothing can be lost by admitting our weaknesses and imperfections to one another. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We will be better mothers, better wives, and better women if we are able to finally drop the act and get real. Who are we pretending for, anyway? — Jill Smokler

She was not a dog person. She was not a cat person, fish person, or horse person. On bad days, she was barely a people person. She ate meat, wore leather, and secretly coveted her mother's old mink. — Laura Lippman

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children. — Benjamin Disraeli

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so. — Jason Reynolds

If he even survives." She shivered, and Amon put his arm around her, drawing her into his steady warmth.
"It's that bad?"
Raisa nodded. "He looked ... he looked awful, Amon. Willo doesn't know if he'll ... She's worried about him. My mother died, and I never got to tell her that I loved her, that I finally understood - just a little anyway. If Han dies too, I don't know what I'll do. — Cinda Williams Chima

You suck, surprising no one!!!! If bad was a boot, you'd fit it!!!! You're a stupid poo-poo head! I had sexual relations with your mother! Your mother was not that good in bed! You, sir, are a wretched soul! I am rubber, you are glue! — Bryan Lee O'Malley

The Indians didn't help me in dealing with the media. I think they wanted to keep my market value down. I'm moody. I know that. I've made some mistakes, but if I was a bad person, would someone want to pay me $55 million, would I have a scholarship fund my mother runs that pays for kids to go to school? — Albert Belle

Tell me what game Steph Landry and I used to play in the big dirt pile they made while they were digging my family's pool, back when we were both seven, or I'll know you're an alien replacement and you've got the real Steph up in your mother ship!"
I glared at him. "G.I. Joe meets Spelunker Barbie," I said. "And stop being so ridiculous. We have to go. We're going to end up at a bad table for lunch. — Meg Cabot

It was as bad as the summer that her mother had taken the training wheels off Coraline's bicycle;but then, back then, in with all the cuts and scrapes (her knees had scabs on top of scabs) she had had a feeling of achievement. She was learning something, doing something she had not known how to do. Now she felt nothing but cold loss. She had failed the ghost children. She had failed her parents. She had failed herself, failed everything. — Neil Gaiman

This tug-of-war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that - even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done. — Kelly Corrigan

The 'good' mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the 'bad' mother, unafraid of a joke and a glass of wine, richly self-expressive, scornful of suburban values, who is, in reality, good. — Rachel Cusk

Sometimes when daughters have a bad-girl mother, they rebel and become good girls. They are constantly embarrassed by me! — Ellen Sussman

A Mother's Advice

Manners matter, regardless of your position in society. There is no excuse in this world to practice bad manners, especially at the table. I found that out in high school. I was invited to my boyfriend's house for dinner. His parents were somewhat formal, and I knew the dinner would be "fancy," at least in my mind. My family wasn't upper class (or even middle class), and my mother never had what would be called "social graces."
Before I left, my mother gave me a piece of advice: hold your head high, be quiet, and take the lead from his mother. Even though I was scared to death, I did what my mother advised and got through the experience with flying colors.
To this day, my mother's advice has gotten me through many difficult situations, especially ones that are totally new to me! With my mother's simple advice, I know I could dine with the Queen of England, just by following her lead. Thanks, Mother!

-Deborah Ford — Deborah Ford

Why do people often feel bad in good environments and good in bad environments? Why did Mother Teresa think that affluent Westerners often seemed poorer than the Calcutta poor, the poorest of the poor? The paradox comes to pass because the impoverishments and enrichments of a self in a world are not necessarily the same as the impoverishments and enrichments of an organism in an environment. — Walker Percy

It used to be the one or the other, right? You were the 'bad girl' or the 'good girl' or the 'bad mother' or 'the good mother,' 'the horrible businesswoman who eschewed her children' or 'the earth mother who was happy to be at home baking pies,' all of that stuff that we sort of knew was a lie. — Annette Bening

It's a myth that if you're liked by only four people it must be good. It might also be very bad: they might be your mother, your brother, your uncle and your aunt. — David Hockney

Social expectations about what constitutes a good or a bad mother haunt every decision, and the rise of the parental advice industry ensures that moms and dads feel inadequate at every turn. — Jessica Valenti

What is a bad thing anyway? A bad thing is something that is different than what I want. Who gets to decide what the bad thing is? Jerry and Esther watched the mother bird lay her eggs in the nest, and then the neighbor's cat ate the baby bird. Esther said "bad cat!" And the cat said, "good bird! — Esther Hicks

Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen - or better still, talk - that their parents were just as bad. — John Ralston Saul

I feel bad for her - i do. a damn shame, really, that i had to have a mother. it can't be easy having me for a son. nothing can prepare someone for that kind of disappointment. — David Levithan

When a child knows that young that her mother doesn't care for her, bad things happen. — Gillian Flynn

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus always seems to be pairing God's forgiveness of us with our forgiveness of others. But why? Growing up, I thought it was a way of guilting us into forgiving others, like Jesus was saying, Hey, I died for you and you can't even be nice to your little brother? As though God can get us to do the right thing if God can just make us feel bad about how much we owe God. But that is not the God I see in Jesus Christ. That is a manipulative mother. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

They had a nice,if not private, reunion before Rupert joined them. He didn't exactly ruin it, but if he insisted on enacting their pretense tonight, even for her mother,it surely would. Unfortunately, he entered the room wearing a horribly bright lime-green dinner jacket that had his mother immediately scowling at him. So even after that kiss upstairs, he'd decided on an evening of humorously baiting his mother again. Bad timing, with her own mother there, or maybe not.At least it kept Rebecca's own mood light for the moment, since she knew why he did it.
Nor did Julie hold her tongue, remarking in disgust, "I see your taste is still beyond flamboyant. You're a bloody peacock, Rue."
He actually looked behind him as he replied, "I thought I had my feathers tucked away nicely. — Johanna Lindsey

No matter how successful I got, my mother still thinks I'm a bad person, basically. — Jim Jefferies

It's not just that," Chief Porter said. "A guy who once would have raped and killed a woman, now a lot of times he also has to cut off her lips and mail them to us or take her eyes for a souvenir and keep them in his freezer at home. There's more flamboyant craziness these days." Giving the buttered cinnamon roll a reprieve, Ozzie said, "Maybe it's all these superhero movies with all their supervillains. Some psychopath who used to be satisfied raping and murdering, these days he thinks that he should be in a Batman movie, he wants to be the Joker or the Penguin." "No real-life bad guy wants to be the Penguin," I assured him. "Norman Bates was happy just dressing up like his mother and stabbing people," Chief Porter said, "but Hannibal Lecter has to cut off their faces and eat their livers with fava beans. The role models have become more intense. — Dean Koontz

My mother, who died aged 82, had Alzheimer's. Losing your memory is bad enough, but everything shuts down. You can't remember how to eat or go to the toilet. It's a terrible disease and so distressing to watch it take over someone you love. — Bonnie Tyler

humiliation then would have been unbearable. It was bad enough now. And what about that poor woman he married? Had the circumstances played out for her in just the way her mother said they would for Susanna if she ever gave her heart to a man? Maybe for Albert, the romance had been all about the chase, and as soon as they'd consummated their love, his ardor had cooled, and he'd left her with child. — Caroline Fyffe

How do you know this?
Because I'm always watching people. When I watch people I too look through them. I learned that from my mother. To glance is not enough; eyes and brains together, acting like a flock of ravenous birds, flapping, tearing, poking ... I know everything about people when I look at them for only a moment. I can tell from their clothes, their walks, their hair and hands, I know all the bad things that they've done. I know how they've failed and how they will fail and how miserable they are. — Dave Eggers

Zachary's mother, Lucy, waylaid him on the third-floor landing and offered, unsolicited, her opinion that the Traumatics had been the kind of adolescently posturing, angst-mongering boy group that never interested her. Then she waited, with parted lips and a saucy challenge in her eyes, to see how her presence
the drama of being her
was registering. In the way of such chicks, she seemed convinced of the originality of her provocation. Katz had encountered, practically verbatim, the same provocation a hundred times before, which put him in the ridiculous position now of feeling bad for being unable to pretend to be provoked: of pitying Lucy's doughty little ego, its floatation on a sea of aging-female insecurity. He doubted he could get anywhere with her even if he felt like trying, but he knew that her pride would be hurt if he didn't make at least a token effort to be disagreeable. (p. 194) — Jonathan Franzen

Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion. — Steven Weinberg

Other families who are poor do what they can to get out of it. My mother did not. She did not utilise her resources. She had a degree. There was something she could have done, but she actively, purposely refused that so we could have this absolutely authentic experience of the worst of capitalism: 'See? Look how bad capitalism is.' — Said Sayrafiezadeh

Over the years our mother has beaten us with belts, shoes, rulers, extension cords, hair brushes, a wooden spoon, a fly swatter, a toilet brush, wire coat hangers, wooden coat hangers and sometimes one of our own toys. When you get whacked by your own paddleball paddle or you have to watch your sister getting spanked with a badminton racquet that she asked Santa Claus (AKA Grandma) to bring, you don't feel much like playing with those things ever again. — Bob Thurber

I always felt bad for Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa lived a whole life helping starving children and dying villages, but she could never be declared a saint 'cause she never actually performed a miracle. And it was towards the end, she was desperate to perform a miracle, so she would go up to starving children and go, 'What's that behind your ear? It's a quarter! — Gilbert Gottfried

That evening, as he got ready for bed, he heard his mother and father talking in their bedroom, and that was how he learned that Billy had been naked when he was discovered and that the police had arrested a man who lived with his mother in a clean little house not far from where the body was found. David knew from the way they were talking that something very bad had happened to Billy before he died, something to do with the man from the clean little house.
...
Now, in another bedroom, he thought of Jonathan Tulvey and Anna, and wondered if a man from a clean little house, a man who lived with his mother and kept sweets in his pockets, had made them go down with him to the railroad tracks.
And there, in the darkness, he had played with them, in his way. — John Connolly

But their mother was the family's heartbeat. Always she was at the center of their good and bad times, lending perspective or a kind word or a shoulder to cry on. — Karen Kingsbury

Let's see if I remember all of this - born in Charlottesville, Virginia, but raised in Salem by her mother, Susan, a teacher, and her father, Jacob, a police officer. Attended Salem Elementary School until your tenth birthday, when your father called into his station to report an unknown child in his house - "
"Stop," I muttered. Liam looked over his shoulder, trying to divide his attention between me and the boy reciting the sordid tale of my life. " - but, bad luck, the PSFs beat the police to your house. Good luck, someone dropped the ball or they had other kiddies to pick up, because they didn't wait around long enough to question your parents, and thus, didn't pre-sort you. And then you came to Thurmond, and you managed to avoid their detecting you were Orange - " "Stop!" I didn't want to hear this - I didn't want anyone to hear it. — Alexandra Bracken

All causes are good,' Yallin told her calmly. 'And those exact same causes are all bad, depending on which side a body's on. Regent Pettibone and his followers certainly thought your mother's cause was a bad one. To my mind, causes aren't about good or bad, in the end. They're about power. That's what makes them so dangerous. — Hilari Bell

Who needed the relief of occasional bad language more than a mother of small children? Maybe — Diana Gabaldon

Menoceus wants his father."
"Bob is crying because he wants his mother to stop calling him that crap-ass name. It's all right Bob. Daddy's got you now. I'm saving you fromMommy's bad naming taste. I'd be crying, too, if my mom named me after an idiot."
"Menoeceus is a great name."
"For an old man or a feminine hygeine product. Not for my son. And next time I get to name the kid and it won't be something that sounds like meningitis. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Mother, when your children are irritable, do not make them more so by scolding and fault-finding, but correct their irritability by good nature and mirthfulness. Irritability comes from errors in food, bad air, too little sleep, a necessity for change of scene and surroundings; from confinement in close rooms, and lack of sunshine. — Herbert Spencer

Having a baby isn't so bad. If you're a female Emperor penguin in the Antarctic. She lays the egg, rolls it over to the father, then takes off for warmer weather where she eats and eats and eats. For two months, the father stands stiff, without food, blind in the 24-hour dark, balancing the egg on his feet. After the little penguin is hatched, the mother sees fit to come home. — L. M. Boyd

It took me years to stop feeling the guilt she made sure I kept feeling about what happened with him. He is a sick person that molests children, but I felt so bad about it for so long. I couldn't talk to a single person about any of this. No one. And she made me feel so bad about it all that I felt I shouldn't talk about it, even if there was someone. I felt ashamed and thought I was an awful person. Sometimes I still do. My mother abandoned me in the worst ways possible. — Ashly Lorenzana

One thing I know is that it is a bad idea to marry someone who had bad parents. If they hated their mother, if they were hated by their mother or father, your marriage will pay for it in ways both obvious and subtle. When the chips are down, when someone is sick or loses their job or gets scared, the old patterns will kick in and he will treat you the way he treated his mother or the way she treated him. — Ellen Gilchrist

I sank down on the toilet, sharp mental pictures of other temper fits filling my mind. I saw my anger, clenched my fists against my rage. I wouldn't be any good for anything if I couldn't change. My poor mother, I thought. She believes in me. Not even she knows how bad I am. Misery engulfed me in darkness. "If you don't do this for me, God, I've got no place else to go." At one point I'd slipped out of the bathroom long enough to grab a Bible. Now I opened it and — Ben Carson

Although I come from a family who are Muslim - my mother is Egyptian, my father is Palestinian - my mother only puts a veil on her head when she has a bad hair day. — Yasmine Al Masri

My mother thought Hollywood was a den of iniquity, and people came to terrible bad ends there. — Kitty Carlisle

I called my mother immediately to inform her that she was a bad parent. "I can't believe you let us watch this. We ate dinner in front of this."
"Everyone watched Twin Peaks," was her response.
"So, if everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it, too?"
"Don't be silly," she laughed, "of course I would, honey. There'd be no one left on the planet. It would be a very lonely place. — Sloane Crosley

Amid the worry of a self- condemnatory soliloquy, his demeanour seemed grave, perhaps cold, both to me and his mother. And yet there was no bad feeling, no malice, no rancour, no littleness in his countenance, beautiful with a man's best beauty, even in its depression. When I placed his chair at the table, which I hastened to do, anticipating the servant, and when I handed him his tea, which I did with trembling care, he said: "Thank you, Lucy," in as kindly a tone of his full pleasant voice as ever my ear welcomed. — Charlotte Bronte

Sometimes the teachers would ask her to translate bad news. "Please tell Mrs. Fondulas that her son is very disruptive." And my mom would nod and say in Greek, "George is a lovely boy." Because she knew if she really translated that, the kid would get a beating and the mother would hate her forever out of embarrassment. — Tina Fey

TEN THINGS THAT PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T READ THE FIRST BOOK REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW.

I. One day, your father and mother were hugging, and they began to have special feelings. Warm feelings that tingled in their private places. It is likely they weren't wearing any clothes. At any rate, they began to rub against each other like two sticks trying to start a fire, and nine months later, you were born. If this is news to you, please put this book down now. There may well be big bad wolves and evil witches and fairies in the pages that follow, but I promise you, this isn't a children's story. — Elliott James

I didn't make any kind of grades in high school. My mother was a single mom, putting my three sisters through college, and I was such a bad student that I knew I had no right to take her money. But I loved being in classes and learning. I took in a huge amount of what I learned, but I had a feeling of always being behind and being in trouble. — Louis C.K.

Each person is made of five different elements, she told me.
Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always critized for his cigarette habit and who always shouted back that she should feel guilty that he didn't let my mother speak her mind.
Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people's ideas, unable to stand on your own. This was like my Auntie An-mei.
Too much water and you flowed in too many different directions. like myself. — Amy Tan

Anand, look at the back of my hands. No hair. The sign of an advanced race, boy. And look at yours. No hair either. But you never know. With some of your mother's bad blood flowing in your veins you could wake up one morning and find yourself hairy like a monkey — V.S. Naipaul

I'm a mother fucking human holocaust! — Jonathan Culver

Not setting the 'proper and accepted' religious example for them conjured up images of the bad mother, the worst mother. Yet wouldn't the example of a mother being true to her journey, taking a stand against patriarchy, and questing for spiritual meaning and wholeness, even when it meant exiting circles of orthodoxy, be a worthwhile example? — Sue Monk Kidd

He was smiling. It was one of those sincere smiles grown-ups give kids when they're trying to get them in arm's reach for something bad. Doctors smile that way right before they give you a shot; teachers look the same just before they tell you they found out what you did. The Big Bad Wolf probably smiled at Red Riding Hood like that when he was pretending to be her grandma. Despite all my mother's flaws including her mean streak, I never once saw that travesty of an expression on her face. — Pat Cadigan

He remembered that his mother had a strong distaste for suicide, feeling that it combined three things of which she strongly disapproved - bad manners, cowardice, and sin. — John Steinbeck

More than any other personality trait, my mother seemed to be ruled by anger and sadness. She seemed to hate being a mother. Watching her unhappiness as I grew up made me conclude that the answer was to try and be as unemotional as I could, which many therapists have taught me is a bad idea. It also made me want to avoid marriage and having children. — Merrill Markoe

Alice wondered if her mother was aware that she wasn't the only one in town who'd come down with a bad case of Blueberry Fever. — Sarah Weeks

Cassian's not a bad sort. He's not ... quite like his father."
Not quite. I pull back, certain my mother has been snatched by aliens. "Are you serious? — Sophie Jordan

Raeanne
Mirror, Mirror

When I look into a
mirror,
it is her face I see.
Her right is my left, double
moles, dimple and all.
My right is her left,
unblemished.

We are exact
opposites,
Kaeleigh and me.
Mirror image identical
twins. One egg, one sperm
one zygote, divided,
sharing one complete
set of genetic markers.

On the outside we are

the same. But not
inside. I think
she is the egg, so
much like our mother
it makes me want to scream.
Cold.
Controlled.

That makes me the sperm
I guess. I take completely
after our father.
All Daddy, that's me.
Codependent.
Cowardly.

Good, bad. Left, right.
Kaeleigh and Raeanne.
One egg, one sperm.
One being, split in two.

And how many
souls? — Ellen Hopkins

But Max said: "Last summer I spent working these peace booths at state fairs. We'd go around in this bigole pickup with this knocked-down booth in the back and boxes of literature. People'd come up to me and hear me talking about colonialism or the bomb or who was responsible for the Cold War, and they'd start railing on Communists. Communists, these damn Communists. And I'd say hey, hold on now, you're talkin' about my mother. They'd look at me like I'd turned into a Russky before their very eyes. It certainly shut 'em up." He smiled to remember, delighted. "They were good people. Country people. Didn't want to say anything bad about a fellow's mom." Saul — John Crowley

I drink because I don't stand a chance and I know it. I couldn't drive a truck and I couldn't get on the cops with my build. I got to sling beer and sing when I just want to sing. I drink because I got responsibilities that I can't handle ... I am not a happy man. I got a wife and children and I don't happen to be a hard-working man. I never wanted a family ... Yes, your mother works hard. I love my wife and I love my children. But shouldn't a man have a better life? Maybe someday it will be that the Unions will arrange for a man to work and to have time for himself too. But that won't be in my time. Now, it's work hard all the time or be a bum ... no in-between. When I die, nobody will remember me for long. No one will say, "He was a man who loved his family and believed in the Union." All they will say is," Too bad. But he was nothing but a drunk no matter which way you look at it." Yes they'll say that. — Betty Smith

I didn't feel like a slut, a bad mother, a terrible person. I didn't worry about my nudity or if he liked what I was doing. This shit was natural, like I was born to be in Joe Callahan's bed and it was natural to him too, like Joe Callahan was born to be in me. — Kristen Ashley

Unpleasant questions are being raised about Mother's Day. Is this day necessary? ... Isn't it bad public policy? ... No politician with half his senses, which a majority of politicians have, is likely to vote for its abolition, however. As a class, mothers are tender and loving, but as a voting bloc they would not hesitate for an instant to pull the seat out from under any Congressman who suggests that Mother is not entitled to a box of chocolates each year in the middle of May. — Russell Baker

Not one word about proposals, no matter how much she pushes," I told my friends. "No matter what she says or how loud she cries, don't try to throw that up as a distraction."
Gabriel's lips twitched. "I don't think it's going to be that bad. It's one woman against five supernatural creatures ... And Zeb."
"You laugh because you haven't heard my mother's thirty-minute verbal dissertation on appropriate seasonal flower choices. We're better off letting her yell at us for being dirty, premarital fornicators. — Molly Harper

We say, "It wasn't that bad. It was all my fault. I'm making all this stuff up. "
All my life, I spoke bitterly of my mother's treatment of me as a child.
Friends asked, "What did she do to you?" I couldn't really describe it, and in frustration would say, "Well, she didn't lock us up in closets." in fact, my mother behaved much worse than that, but by focusing on the empty closet, I avoided looking at what waited beyond it. — Sarah E. Olson

I always prayed the same way at night: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the word, and me. And please make my father quit drinking."
As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Questions bounced off my self-constructed wall of values
a barricade I'd made from the fears I'd pushed into my darkness.
How could Ryan, a professional baseball player, really resist all those women? How could I really trust Jerry, my childhood friend? I'd barely awakened to sex and already boys were the seventh wonder of the world. Did anyone really trust another person? I needed proof. That proof hadn't revealed itself ... yet. — Pamela Taeuffer

I suppose really I was a wife, a mother and a business woman, and then suddenly catapulted into this kind of world of craziness where it's ... there's good sides and there's bad sides ... I wouldn't kind of turn the clock back and take another direction. — Lisa Vanderpump

It gave me a shock. A sudden shock of indescribable pain, like when you're a kid, and you're hit on the nose with a basketball on a cold morning, and you cannot believe how much it hurts, and your friends all laugh and you want your mother so bad. — Liane Moriarty

Patience is the mother of joy. It is through patience that we can endure each others company long enough to fall in love, through patience that we can cooperate in a task, through patience that we can go from abysmally bad to almost all right, through patience that we can restrain ourselves from wasting our lives in anger and disappointment. The patient person waits, listens, expects, hopes, nurtures, cares, remembers, speaks, trusts, and is courteous. The impatient person demands, gets angry, hurries, presumes, is careless, despairs, forgets, complains, distrusts, disrupts. — William Bryant Logan

It was called 'We Wear the Mask', by Paul Laurence Dunbar. I transcribed the first stanza and then started jotting down my reaction to it.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, -
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

I used to wear masks so subtle I barely noticed them. A compliment to my mother after a dismal meal, a smile at my best friend when she sang out of tune, a forced laugh at my uncle's bad jokes. I wore small masks that came and went, like fleeting expressions.

I am stuck inside the mask I wear now. I want to rip it off. I want to show my scars to the world, to unveil the ugliness that breathes inside me. I want to be unashamed. I want to be unafraid. But every day the mask gets tighter, and I suffocate a little more.

I stopped writing. — Catherine Doyle

And you and I know you're the best thing that ever happened to me, and, yes, that's an expression, something people say, that has no meaning, but what I mean is there isn't anybody in the whole world who has loved me the way you have, not my mother, not my old man, not my friends.
There's nothing preventing me and you from loving each other and being some kinda world-class shining beacon of love except how bad do we want it and what are we willing to do for it?
Now, I know I did you wrong, and I was freaking out and being stupid and I was mean to you. You know sometimes I get all fucking confused and I can't see outside of my own asshole. I'm unhappy. Why am I unhappy? It's gotta be somebody's fault, right? It couldn't just be that I'm a self-centered fuck spinning around inside my own dank cloud of concerns.
There isn't anything I can think of that I really want or that the best part of me wants, that loving you won't start doing. I love you. — Ethan Hawke

WAKE
Dealing with an alcoholic single mother and endless hours of working at Heather Nursing Home to raise money for college, high-school senior Janie Hannagan doesn't need more problems. But inexplicably, since she was eight years old, she has been pulled in to people's dreams, witnessing their recurring fears, fantasies and secrets. Through Miss Stubin at Heather Home, Janie discovers that she is a dream catcher with the ability to help others resolve their haunting dreams. After taking an interest in former bad boy Cabel, she must distinguish between the monster she sees in his nightmares and her romantic feelings for him. And when she learns more about Cabel's covert identity, Janie just may be able to use her special dream powers to help solve crimes in a suspense-building ending with potential for a sequel. McMann lures teens in by piquing their interest in the mysteries of the unknown, and keeps them with quick-paced, gripping narration and supportive characters. — Lisa McMann

"There is an easy standoff between the two kinds of mother which sometimes makes it hard for us to talk to each other. I suspect that the non-working mother looks at the working mother with envy and fear because she thinks that the working mum has got away with it. And the working mum looks back with fear and envy because she knows that she has not. In order to keep going in either role, you have to convince yourself that the alternative is bad. The working mother says, because I am more fulfilled as a person I can be a better mother to my children. And sometimes, she may even believe it. The mother who stays home knows that she is giving her kids an advantage, which is something to cling to when your toddler has emptied his beaker of juice over you last clean t-shirt. — Allison Pearson

We stayed all day long. We closed our eyes and paryed, which we had not doen together in a long time. The nurse came in and out of the room. Everything felt awful and I wondered why the whole world didn't seem to notice how bad things really were. I thought of how I'd gotten used to awful, how after my dad died the planets kept on spinning and I got up and ate breakfast every morning and kept going to school. Something happens and it's terrible and you think you can't live another day, but then your mother gets used to it and you get used to it and you both keep on living, and you're not sure if that getting-used-to-things is good or the way life should be. — Margaret McMullan

Because life is robust,
Because life is bigger than equations, stronger than money, stronger than guns and poison and bad zoning policy, stronger than capitalism,
Because Mother Nature bats last, and Mother Ocean is strong, and we live inside our mothers forever, and Life is tenacious and you can never kill it, you can never buy it,
So Life is going to dive down into your dark pools, Life is going to explode the enclosures and bring back the commons,
O you dark pools of money and law and quantitudinal stupidity, you oversimple algorithms of greed, you desperate simpletons hoping for a story you can understand,
Hoping for safety, hoping for cessation of uncertainty, hoping for ownership of volatility, O you poor fearful jerks,
Life! Life! Life! Life is going to kick your ass. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Don't even talk to me about being a mother. You were never a mother! Just the psychotic twat I lived with for the first fourteen years. — Brandon Shire

My mother has had breast cancer twice. And my mother has always been this very positive human being: a glass-half-full type. Like, when she was in treatment and feeling really bad, she would always talk about some nurse that was particularly nice to her. — Susanne Bier

I think nobody alive today is a more powerful agent of conversion than someone like Mother Teresa. You can refute arguments but not her life. When she came to the National Prayer Breakfast and lectured President Clinton about abortion, he had nothing to say to her. He can't argue with a saint. It's too bad there isn't an easier way, because becoming a saint is not the easiest thing in the world. It's much easier to become an apologist or a philosopher or a theologian. — Peter Kreeft

Her mother's quiet disapproval and withdrawal was a death in itself, and Franckline's despair at it was transmitted, she was sure of it, to the child. She transgressed twice, first by making the child, then by giving it her despair, the despair that left it unable to live. — Pamela Erens

I like cooking but I don't know much and whenever I enter the kitchen, my mother sends me out! Because whenever I try a dish from a book, it comes out bad. — Soundarya

I had very low self-esteem. Books saved me. I found friends in stories like The Chronicles of Narnia and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. During lunch hour at school I'd avoid social interactions by sitting on the bathroom sink and reading. My mother worked in my school cafeteria. When my anxiety got really bad, I'd put a coat on, grab my book and a flashlight, and hide in the freezer with the mac and cheese. — Jenny Lawson

As for myself, I look upon all women as my Mother. This is a very pure attitude of mind. There is no risk or danger in it. To look upon a woman as one's sister is also not bad. But the other attitudes are very difficult and dangerous. It is almost impossible to keep to the purity of the ideal. — Ramakrishna

But how can an ordinary girl not know this? Had Varana's mother not bothered to teach her anything at all or just shouted complaints from a distance while her children fought and argued amongst themselves like wolf cubs? — Ruth Downie

He was the bad boy type all right. The type my mother warned me about. the type you have a good time with, then forget about as you go home to live your boring life, while he moves on to the next skirt ready to give him the time of day. — J.C. Reed

Saint Thomas Aquinas says, wisely, that the only way to drive out a bad passion is by a stronger good passion. The same is true of thoughts as of passions. When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring it back, like a mother. [ ... ] The will-parent must discipline the mind-child, avoiding both the opposite extremes commonly made in disciplining either children or thoughts: tyranny or permissiveness. — Peter Kreeft

I think that you are what you speak a lot of times, and there's power in the tongue. I feel sorry for the people who always have something negative to say. If something happens bad in my day, I don't tweet about it - I pray about it, or talk to my husband about it or my mother about it, and get it off of me and move on. — Monica Denise Brown

Katz had read extensively in popular sociobiology, and his understanding of the depressive personality type and its seemingly perverse persistence in the human gene pool was that depression was successful adaptation to ceaseless pain and hardship. Pessimism, feelings of worthlessness and lack of entitlement, inability to derive satisfaction from pleasure, a tormenting awareness of the world's general crappiness: for Katz Jewish paternal forebears, who'd been driven from shtetl to shtetl by implacable anti-Semites, as for the old Angles and Saxons on his mother's side, who'd labored to grow rye and barley in the poor soils and short summers of northern Europe, feeling bad all the time and expecting the worse had been natural ways of equilibriating themselves with the lousiness of their circumstances. Few things gratified depressives, after all, more than really bad news. This obviously wasn't an optimal way to live, but it had its evolutionary advantages. — Jonathan Franzen