Quotes & Sayings About A Mother's Arms

Her voice was so melancholy that Gansey was struck all at once by what he and Blue really lost by keeping their relationship a secret. Blue radiated psychic energy for others, but touch was where she gained hers back. She was always hugging her mother or holding Noah's hand or linking her elbow in Adam's or resting her boots on Ronan's legs as they sat on the sofa. Touching Gansey's neck just between his hair and his collar. This worry in her tone demanded fingers braided together, arms on shoulders, cheeks rested against chests.
But because Gansey was too cowardly to tell Adam about falling in love with her, she had to stand there with her sadness by herself.
Aurora took Blue's hand. — Maggie Stiefvater

This is the codicil of motherhood: Like it or not, you acquire a sixth sense when it comes to your children - viscerally feeling their joy, their frustration, and the sharp blow to the heart when someone causes them pain. "Fast." Mariah sighs. "And with my eyes wide open." As Millie opens her arms, Mariah moves into them, drawing close the comfort of childhood with a great rush of relief. She tells her mother of Ian, who was not following her when she thought he was, who was not the person he made himself out to be. She describes the way they would sit on the porch after Faith went to sleep, and how they would sometimes talk and sometimes just let the night settle over their shoulders. She does not tell Millie of Ian's brother, of what Faith might or might not have briefly done for him. She does not tell Millie how it felt to have Ian's body pressed against hers, heat from head to toe, how even during hours — Jodi Picoult

Consider a small child sitting on his mother's lap while she reads him a picture book. The picture book opens to a width that effectively places the child at the center of a closed circle - that of mother's body, arms, and the picture book ... That circle, so private and intimate, is a place apart form the demands and stresses of daily life, a sanctuary in and from which the child can explore the many worlds offered in picture books. Despite all of our society's technological advances, it still just takes one child, one book, and one reader, to create this unique space, to work this everyday magic. — Martha V. Parravano

A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them. — Victor Hugo

Yet, when the boy himself assumes married life, he will honor his mother above his wife, and show her often a real affection and deference. Then it is that the woman comes into her own, ruling indoors with an iron hand, stoutly maintaining the ancient tradition, and, forgetful of her former misery, visiting upon the slender shoulders of her little daughters-in-law all the burdens and the wrath that fell upon her own young back. But one higher step is perhaps reserved for her. With each grandson laid in her arms she is again exalted. The family line is secure. Her husband's soul is protected. Proud is she among women. Blessed be the gods! — Katherine Mayo

I realize it's commonplace for parents to say to their child sternly, 'I love you, but I don't always like you.' But what kind of love is that? It seems to me that comes down to, 'I'm not oblivious to you - that is, you can still hurt my feelings - but I can't stand having you around.' Who wants to be loved like that? Given a choice, I might skip the deep blood tie and settle for being liked. I wonder if wouldn't have been more moved if my own mother had taken me in her arms and said, 'I like you.' I wonder if just enjoying your kid's company isn't more important. — Lionel Shriver

The mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes at his mother's face and finds himself therein ... provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears, and plans for the child. In that case, the child would find not himself in his mother's face, but rather the mother's own projections. This child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life would be seeking this mirror in vain. — Donald Woods Winnicott

See how a sleepy child will put off the inevitable departure for bed. The little creature's eyes blink and stare, and it needs constant jogging to prevent his nodding off into the slumber which nature craves. His waking is a pain; he is quite worn out, and peevish, and stupid, and yet he implores a respite, and deprecates repose, and vows he is not sleepy, even to the moment when his mother takes him in her arms, and carries him, in a sweet slumber, to the nursery. So it is with us old children of earth and the great sleep of death, and nature our kind mother. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

But the ultimate reason for our hope is not to be found at all in what we want, wish for and wait for; the ultimate reason is that we are wanted and wished for and waited for. What is it that awaits us? Does anything await us at all, or are we alone? Whenever we base our hope on trust in the divine mystery, we feel deep down in our hearts: there is someone who is waiting for you, who is hoping for you, who believes in you. We are waited for as the prodigal son in the parable is waited for by his father. We are accepted and received, as a mother takes her children into her arms and comforts them. God is our last hope because we are God's
first love. — Jurgen Moltmann

It turned out to be just his sort of life in Melbourne [Florida]
a little three-room mini apartment to himself, and down on the strip, five different bars where you had women going around in bathing suits. In the backyard, his mother's new husband had grown a miraculous tree, a lemon trunk grafted with orange, tangerine, satsuma, kumquat, and grapefruit limbs, each bearing its own vivid fruit. Every morning, Jeff would go out and fill his arms, and squeeze himself a pitcher of juice, thick and sun-hot. That house was good for his mother, too. The swimming pool trimmed fifteen pounds off of her. She didn't seem to have moods anymore, and she didn't fly off the handle when Jeff beat her in the cribbage games they played most afternoons. — Wells Tower

It is far more important to love your wife than to love God, and I will tell you why. You cannot help him, but you can help her. You can fill her life with the perfume of perpetual joy. It is far more important that you love your children than that you love Jesus Christ. And why? If he is God you cannot help him, but you can plant a little flower of happiness in every footstep of the child, from the cradle until you die in that child's arms. Let me tell you to-day it is far more important to build a home than to erect a church. The holiest temple beneath the stars is a home that love has built. And the holiest altar in all the wide world is the fireside around which gather father and mother and the sweet babes. — Robert G. Ingersoll

Rojer!" his mother cried, stumbling towards the washing trough before falling to her knees. Screaming in pain, she reached back and got a firm grip on one of the coreling's horns.
"You ... can't ... have ... my ... son!" she screamed, and threw herself forward, pulling on the horn with all her strength. Torn from its perch, the demon took ribbons of flesh with it, as Kally flipped it into the trough.
Soaking crockery shattered on impact, and the flame demon gurgled and thrashed, steam filling the air as the water was brought to an instant boil. Kally screamed as her arms burned, but she held the creature under until its thrashes stopped. — Peter V. Brett

You've spent her whole life holding her. Whether cradled in your arms as a baby or wrapped in your embrace as a young woman, she's been yours to have and to hold, Mother of the Bride - until now. Now the time has come to let her go, to let her
begin her own family and pledge her allegiance to another. — Cheryl Barker

Daniel observed her from afar, and tried in vain to conceal the hunger in his eyes. She showed none of the disdain against the Indians that he had encountered from whites back east. Aimee was genuinely warm and friendly with these people who were like family to him. She obviously loved children. She played games with the younger ones, and each time she held Elk Runner's infant in her arms, a new wave of desire spread through him. He tried not to think about what it would be like to see her holding a child, their child, in her arms. That could never happen. His white mother had died in this wilderness, giving birth to him. No matter how she dressed, or her abilities on the trail, Aimee was still a white woman. Like a beautiful spring flower, she would wither and die in these mountains. Neither lasted long in this harsh environment. — Peggy L. Henderson

And let's face it people, no one is ever honest with you about child birth. Not even your mother. "It's a pain you forget all about once you have that sweet little baby in your arms." Bullshit. I CALL BULLSHIT. Any friend, cousin, or nosey-ass stranger in the grocery store that tells you it's not that bad is a lying sack of shit. Your vagina is roughly the size of the girth of a penis. It has to stretch and open andturn into a giant bat cave so the life-sucking human you've been growing for nine months can angrily claw its way out. Who in their right mind would do that willingly? You're just walking along one day and think to yourself, "You know, I think it's time I turn my vagina into an Arby's Beef and Cheddar (minus the cheddar) and saddle myself down for a minimum of eighteen years to someone who will suck the soul and the will to live right out of my body so I'm a shell of the person I used to be and can't get laid even if I pay for it. — Tara Sivec

There is a story about the life of Buddha in which a mother carries her dead son to him draped in her arms. The woman has heard that he is a holy man who can restore life. Weeping, she appeals for mercy. Gently, Buddha tells her that he can help save her son's life, but that first she has to bring him a mustard seed secured from a family that has never experienced death. Desperately she searches home after home. Many want to help, but everyone has already experienced a loss--a sister, a husband, a child. Finally the woman returns to Buddha. "What have you found?" he asks. "Where is your mustard seed and where is your son? You are not carrying him."
"I buried him," she replies — Chanrithy Him

The Poison Maiden has conceived by him, and is plumb ready to enter the divine category of mother, only one last fiend clubs her to death. The final clinch of male romanticism is that each man kills the thing he loves; whether she be Catharine in A Farewell to Arms, or the Grecian Urn, the 'tension that she be perfect' means that she must die, leavinf the hero's status as a great lover unchallenged. The pattern is still commonplace: the hero cannot marry. The sexual exploit must be conquest, not cohabitation and mutual tolerance. — Germaine Greer

She sees me once in a guy's arms and she has us married already. I wonder what Raffe would think of my mom being his mother-in-law. — Susan Ee

Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. — James Joyce

There's still a little girl inside every grown woman who would love to be able to fall into the arms of her mother and cry her eyes out every now and then. — Toni Sorenson

The most comfortable place on earth is the arms of a mother. — Debasish Mridha

Love is about control and loss of control. In love, we give ourselves up to each other. We lose control or, rather, we cede control to another, trusting in a way we would never otherwise trust, letting the other person hold the deepest part of our being in their hands, with the capacity to hurt it mortally. This cession of control is a deeply terrifying thing, which is why we crave it and are drawn to it like moths to the flame, and why we have to trust it unconditionally. In love, so many hazardous uncertainties in life are resolved: the constant negotiation with other souls, the fear and distrust that lie behind almost every interaction, the petty loneliness that we learned to live with as soon as we grew apart from our mother's breast. We lose all this in the arms of another. We come home at last to a primal security, made manifest by each other's nakedness ...
And with that loss of control comes mutual power, the power to calm, the power to redeem, and the power to hurt. — Andrew Sullivan

I'll make sure he stands up and knows what he's worth," she'd interrupted. "There won't be a day he's not loved. I'll say it with my hands - making a home for him. I'll say it with my arms - hugging him so he knows his mother is present every day. His heart will never be alone. And I'll say it out loud every day. Because it matters. — Debra Anastasia

The Lord Almighty leads this Church, and he will never suffer you to be led astray if you are found doing your duty. You may go home and sleep as sweetly as a babe in its mother's arms, as to any danger of your leaders leading you astray, for if they should try to do so the Lord would quickly sweep them from the earth. Your leaders are trying to live their religion as far as they are capable of doing so — Brigham Young

I'm not going out with Val. I broke up with Val. I have a new date tonight."

Chunk's arms go up in the air and she looks up to the ceiling. "Thank the Lord!" she proclaims loudly.

My mother laughs and nods. "Yes. Thank the Lord," she says, relieved. She turns back toward the stove and I can't stop looking back and forth between the both of them. — Colleen Hoover

Can I always be thinking of Jesus? Thank God, you need not always be thinking of Him. You may be the manager of a bank, and your whole attention may be required to carry out the business that you have to do. But thank God, while I have to think of my business, Jesus will think of me, and He will come in and will take charge of me. That little child, three months old, as it sleeps in its mother's arms, lies helplessly there; it hardly knows its mother, it does not think of her, but the mother thinks of the child. And this is the blessed mystery of love, that Jesus the God-man waits to come in to me in the greatness of His love; and as He gets possession of my heart, He embraces me in those divine arms and tells me, "My child, I the Faithful One, I the Mighty One will abide with thee, will watch over thee and keep thee all the days. — Andrew Murray

Why shouldn't we kill you?" he asked the black-garbed male who came forward to meet him.
"We have no quarrel with you." The man's eyes were flat, his voice toneless. "We ask permission to enter your territory to hunt a Psy fugitive."
"Permission denied." Lucas folded his arms. "I don't make a habit of allowing enemies into my territory."
"This fugitive may be dangerous to you and your people."
Lucas smiled and it was nothing friendly. "Then the fugitive will die."
"We would prefer to capture this one alive."
"Didn't your mother ever tell you - you don't always get what you want? — Nalini Singh

You needn't be thinking," he said to the goldfinch, "that because I'm coming down this line alone day after day, it's always to be so. Some of these times you'll be swinging on this wire, and you'll see me coming, and you'll swing, skip, and flirt yourself around, and chip up right spunky: 'SEE ME?' I'll be saying 'See you? Oh, Lord! See her!' You'll look, and there she'll stand. The sunshine won't look gold any more, or the roses pink, or the sky blue, because she'll be the pinkest, bluest, goldest thing of all. You'll be yelling yourself hoarse with the jealousy of her. The sawbird will stretch his neck out of joint, and she'll turn the heads of all the flowers. Wherever she goes, I can go back afterward and see the things she's seen, walk the path she's walked, hear the grasses whispering over all she's said; and if there's a place too swampy for her bits of feet; Holy Mother! Maybe--maybe she'd be putting the beautiful arms of her around me neck and letting me carry her over! — Gene Stratton-Porter

I never wanted to marry anyone before," he said. "When two people marry, they surrender a small part of themselves. They become more like each other. I never met a woman who was better than me at things I take pride in, and I never wanted to be like them. I always knew that whoever I was with was temporary. There was always a new woman around the corner. I've seen marriages shatter. Twice. My mother left, then Richard's wife. It almost broke my brother."
"So how do I know that you won't move on and leave me broken?"
"Because you are the one. You are better than me in some things, and I am better than you in others." He drew her into his arms. "I don't mind being a bit like you. I hope you don't mind being a bit like me. — Ilona Andrews

I felt overwhelmed. I didn't expect a first kiss to be so ... life altering. In a few brief moments, the rule book of my universe had been rewritten. Suddenly I was a brand new person. I was as fragile as a newborn, but instead of the doctor placing me in my mother's arms, he'd put me in Ren's. What would Ren do with me? Would he draw me near, soothe me, and teach me about this new world or would he reject me and tell the doctor there must be some mistake. There was no way to know. What a breakable and delicate thing a heart was, no wonder I'd kept mine locked away. — Colleen Houck

I have seen a land shining with goodness, where each man protects his brother's dignity as readily as his own, where war and want have ceased and all races live under the same law of love and honour.
I have seen a land bright with truth, where a man's word is his pledge and falsehood is banished, where children sleep safe in their mother's arms and never know fear or pain.
I have seen a land where kings extend their hands in justice rather than reach for the sword; where mercy, kindness, and compassion flow like deep water over the land, and men revere virtue, revere truth, revere beauty, above comfort, pleasure or selfish gain. A land where peace reigns in the hill, and love like a fire from every hearth; where the True God is worshipped and his ways acclaimed by all. — Stephen R. Lawhead

For years I'd been awaiting that overriding urge I'd always heard about, the narcotic pining that draws childless women ineluctably to strangers' strollers in parks. I wanted to be drowned by the hormonal imperative, to wake one day and throw my arms around your neck, reach down for you, and pray that while that black flower bloomed behind my eyes you had just left me with child. (With child: There's a lovely warm sound to that expression, an archaic but tender acknowledgement that for nine months you have company wherever you go. Pregnant, by contrast, is heavy and bulging and always sounds to my ear like bad news: "I'm pregnant." I instinctively picture a sixteen-year-old at the dinner table- pale, unwell, with a scoundrel of a boyfriend- forcing herself to blurt out her mother's deepest fear.) (27) — Lionel Shriver

I don't know if I saw blood before turning into Mother's arms or if I daubed it on later, in my memory, with a brush (Life of Pi 36) — Yann Martel

When I was three years old and in my mother's arms, she looked down at me and said, "Son, the way I'm taking care of you now, when you get old, always have a woman to take care of you like this." Dig this! All I'm goin' do is rest and dress, buy gasoline and lean. I'm goin' buy diamond rings and have the best of everything. I'm goin' pimp whores. — Donald Goines

Ron held up his badge. Mrs Weasley let out a shriek just like Hermione's. 'I don't believe it! I don't believe it! Oh, Ron, how wonderful! A prefect! That's everyone in the family!' 'What are Fred and I, next-door neighbours?' said George indignantly, as his mother pushed him aside and flung her arms around her youngest son. — J.K. Rowling

Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off - all tears, fawning up at her, till she takes her in her arms ... That's how you look, Patroclus, streaming live tears. — Homer

She pointed to a chair,then shifted the finger to her son. "You,go. I'll finish with you later."
"I'll be at the stables, doing penance." With a heavy sigh, Patrick rose, then he wrapped his arms around his mother's waist, laid his chin on top of her head. "Sorry."
"Get."
But Brian saw her lay a hand over Patrick's, and squeeze. With a quick grin tossed to the room in general, he bolted.
"That boy's responsible for every other line on my face," Adelia muttered.
"What lines?" Travis asked, and made her laugh.
"That's the right answer. — Nora Roberts

The dissection started out smoothly enough. Several boys lifted the thawed carcass out of its container and put it on the lab table. Then a line of girls elbowed their way in to form a phalanx at the dissecting table. They looked like groupies in a mosh pit. There was no room in the front line for the boys, who stood behind and watched, arms folded across their chests....One girl spent most of her time in a trancelike state picking the sharp little rings out of the squid's suckers. She was deeply intent on trying to harvest as many of the toothed rings as possible. Later that day she went home and shocked her mother by saying she wanted to switch her career goal from baking to marine science. — Wendy Williams

I don't want to die, Buddy.' She put her head on his chest. 'I know this cancer probably won't kill me. But I think about dying all the time. I dream about it. What do you think? Do I get to see Pat on the other side, or do I just lie there in the dirt forever?'
... Buddy wrapped his arms around her and drew her close. 'I think dead is dead,' he said softly, near her ear. 'But that's not so bad. I think of it as following. Following the rest of them ... My mother and father. Your sister. Your mom. But not just them. All of them. All of us. People ... Maybe it's just a way to feel less lonesome about the whole thing, but I think of dying as a path we all go down separately at first, but eventually, together. — Anita Diamant

As hard as I have tried to remember the exact moment when I fell in love with God, I cannot do it. My earliest memories are bathed in a kind of golden light that seemed to embrace me as surely as my mother's arms. The divine presence was strongest outdoors, and most palpable when I was alone. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Always the idea of unbroken quiet broods around the grave. It is a port where the storms of life never beat, and the forms that have been tossed on its chafing waves lie quiet forevermore. There the child nestles as peacefully as ever it lay in its mother's arms, and the workman's hands lie still by his side, and the thinker's brain is pillowed in silent mystery, and the poor girl's broken heart is steeped in a balm that extracts its secret woe, and is in the keeping of a charity that covers all blame. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I reach over and stroke her hair. When I do, a few of the strands fall off in my fingers. I pull my hand back and slowly wrap them around my finger as I walk to my room and pick my purple hair clip up off the floor. I open the clip and place the strands of hair inside and snap it shut. I place the clip under my bedroom pillow and I go back to my mother's room. I slide into the bed beside her and wrap my arms around her. She finds my hand and we interlock fingers as we talk without saying a single word. — Colleen Hoover

Too many times I'd left him reaching for me, from a babysitter's arms. "Am I still a mother?" I asked myself ... What parts of the day could I cut out and still give him enough? Paul never asked himself that. He thought he was a great dad. — Mona Simpson

A baby almost killed me as I walked to work one morning. By passing beneath a bus shelter's roof at the ordained moment I lived to tell my tale. With strangers surrounding me I looked at what remained. Laoughter from heaven made us lift our eyes skyward. The baby's mother lowered her arms and leaned out her window. Without applause her audience drifted off, seeking crumbs in the gutters of this city of God. Xerox shingles covered the shelter's remaining glass pane, and the largest read:
Want to be crucified. Have own nails.
Leave message on machine.
The fringe of numbers along the ad's hem had been stripped away. My shoes crunched glass underfoot; my skirt clung to my legs as I continued down the street. November dawn's seventy-degree bath made my hair lose its set. Mother above appeared ready to take her own bow; I too, as ever, flew on alone. — Jack Womack

A mother's arms are more comforting than anyone else's. — Princess Diana

It's just that the thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man - the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated off-spring - you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one.
I look at him and see the baby I held in my arms, dewing besotted, unable to believe that I'd created another human being. I see the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history. — Jojo Moyes

The short sharp shock of three thousand mother two hundred mothers. The ones who picked through the supermarket debris for pieces of their dead husbands. The ones who still laundered their gone son's bed sheets by hand. The ones who kept an extra teacup at the end of the table, in case of miracles. The elegant ones, the angry ones, the clever ones, the ones in hairnets, the ones exhausted by all the dying. They carried their sorrow - not with photos under their arms, or with public wailing, or by beating their chests, but with a weariness around the eyes. Mothers and daughters and children and grandmothers, too. They never fought the wars, but they suffered them, blood and bone. — Colum McCann

Truth is dangerous. It topples palaces and kills kings. It stirs gentle men to rage and bids them take up arms. It wakes old grievances and opens forgotten wounds. It is the mother of the sleepless night and the hag-ridden day. And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would silence Truth's voice are more destructive by far.
It is most perilous to be a speaker of Truth. Sometimes one must choose to be silent, or be silenced. But if a truth cannot be spoken, it must at least be known. Even if you dare not speak truth to others, never lie to yourself. — Frances Hardinge

The best place to cry is on a mother's arms. — Jodi Picoult

Is there somebody out there? Amy, is that you?" her mother called.
"No. Tell me this isn't happening." Quinn rested his forehead against hers. "Has she got a wiretap on you or something? I swear, she's like a walking hard-on detector."
Amy bit her lip, trying not to laugh. Quinn levered himself up on his arms.
"Mrs. P., if you value your life, you'll go back inside and turn off the light right now. — Sarah Mayberry

Fighting in the name of freedom has too high a price, Merlin sighed as he leaned into his mother's arms. — Dee Marie

Infinite, and an infant. Eternal, and yet born of a woman. Almighty, and yet hanging on a woman's breast. Supporting a universe, and yet needing to be carried in a mother's arms. King of angels, and yet the reputed son of Joseph. Heir of all things, and yet the carpenter's despised son. — Charles Spurgeon

The child you hold in your arms is your gift to a future that you will not see. Therefore, we must turn a blind eye to ourselves and selflessly pour the best of ourselves into our children while rigorously sifting out the worst of ourselves. And once we are utterly spent by such daring gestures, we will shockingly discover the resulting emptiness as astonishingly filled. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

It's only now that he's been corrupted that I can fully appreciate the real Peeta. Even more than I would've if he'd died. The kindness, the steadiness, the warmth that had an unexpected heat behind it. Outside of Prim, my mother and Gale, how many people in the world love me unconditionally? I think in my case, the answer may be none.
Sometimes, when I'm alone, I take the pearl from where it lives in my pocket and try to remember the boy with the bread, the strong arms that warded off nightmares on the train, the kisses in the arena. To make myself put a name to the thing I've lost. But what's the use? It's gone. He's gone. Whatever existed between us is gone. All that's left is my promise to kill Snow. I tell myself this ten times a day. — Suzanne Collins

how you were moved by a child in its mother's arms, how you saw an old man on his deathbed, and how it was your father who lay there dead, who had passed on to the silent dead - remember this, remember this. Forget, forget nothing, don't forget the sweetness, don't forget the severity. If indifference and unkindness take hold of your being, stir your memory and think of all the beautiful, and all the burdensome things. Remember there is life and there is death, remember there are moments of bliss and there are graves. Do not be forgetful, but instead remember this. — Robert Walser

If you want to understand what a year of life means, ask a student who just flunked his end-of-the-year exams. Or a month of life: speak to a mother who has just given birth to a premature baby and is waiting for him to be taken out of the incubator before she can hold him safe and sound in her arms. Or a week: interview a man who works in a factory or a mine to feed his family. Or a day: ask two people madly in love who are waiting for their next rendezvous. Or an hour: talk to a claustrophobia sufferer stuck in a broken-down elevator. Or a second: look at the expression on the face of a man who has just escaped from a car wreck. Or one-thousandth of a second: ask the athlete who just won the silver medal at the Olympic Games, and not the gold he trained for all his life. Life is magic, Arthur, and I know what I'm saying because since my accident I appreciate the value of every instant. So I beg you, let's make the most of all the seconds that we have left. — Marc Levy

What a mother wants is to hold her babies when they're small and to be held by them once they've grown tall. It's empty arms a mother dreads. — Richelle E. Goodrich

As her vision flickered one last time, the man was gone; it was her mother looking into her eyes.
Her mother's eyes were filled with so much love that it seemed to release her from her pain and fear as it did when she was a small child. Her mother cradled her as a baby, rocking her back and forth. She was safe now in her mother's arms. She was at peace. Mommy, her heart sang, you're here to save me. — Kim Cormack

My baby is five. She falls asleep in my arms ... Her breath is warm on my face, all that is alive and warm and breathing inside of her now, falling upon me, and I can't capture it, hold it, this, her life now, me in this moment. She is leaving me, she's growing up and moving away from me, and she stirs and I sweep back the crop of the golden ringlets. Stay, Little One, stay. Love's a deep wound and what is a mother without a child and why can't I hold on to now forever and her here and me here and why does time snatch away a heart I don't think mine can beat without? Why do we all have to grow old? Why do we have to keep saying good-bye? — Ann Voskamp

Forty-five minutes later, Benedict was slouching in his chair, his eyes glazed. Every now and then he had to stop and make sure his mouth wasn't hanging open.
His mother's conversation was that boring.
The young lady she had wanted to discuss with him had actually turned out to be seven young ladies, each of which she assured him was better than the last.
Benedict thought he might go mad. Right here in his mother's sitting room he was going to go stark, raving mad. He'd suddenly pop out of his chair, fall to the floor in a frenzy his arms and legs waving, mouth frothing-
"Benedict, are you even listening to me?"
He looked up and blinked. Damn. Now he would have to focus on his mother's list of possible brides. The prospect of losing his sanity had been infinitely more appealing. — Julia Quinn

For arousing compassion, the nineteenth-century yogi Patrul Rinpoche suggested imagining beings in torment - an animal about to be slaughtered, a person awaiting execution. To make it more immediate, he recommended imagining ourselves in their place. Particularly painful is his image of a mother with no arms watching as a raging river sweeps her child away. To contact the suffering of another being fully and directly is as painful as being in the woman's shoes. — Pema Chodron

She's looking at him with something like wonder. "Why do you weep, Jack?" "The past," he says. "Isn't that always what does it?" And thinks of his mother, sitting by the window, smoking a cigarette, and listening while the radio plays "Crazy Arms." Yes, it's always the past. That's where the hurt is, all you can't get over. — Stephen King

I spent a restless night plagued with excruciating dreams of Adam sucking me off in front of Matt, Jay and my mother. Matt and Jay weren't paying much attention, being too busy excavating each other's tonsils with their tongues, but Mum was staring with folded arms and narrowed eyes, occasionally muttering, Oh, for heaven's sake, Timothy - show a little enthusiasm! — J.L. Merrow

Children always forgive their mothers. That's the way God's designed them. He gives them two arms, two legs, and a heart that will cry 'mother' until the day it stops beating. — Nadia Hashimi

Hi, puppy."
she's not a puppy. She's a girl," Nancy's mother says.
Nancy pats me and says, "Good puppy. Nice puppy." When he mother bends down to pull her away, she wraps both arms around my legs and wails. "No! My puppy! — Lauren Myracle

In my parents' house, nothing was ever thrown away. Clothes piled up, formed drifts that grew into mountains Philip, Baron, and I would climb and leap from. The heaps of garments filled the hallway and chased my parents out of their own bedroom, so that they eventually slept in the room that was once Dad's office. Empty bags and boxes filled gaps in the clutter, boxes that once held rings and sneakers and clothes. A trumpet that my mother wanted to make into a lamp rested atop a stack of tattered magazines filled with articles Dad planned to read, near the heads and feet and arms of dolls Mom promised she would stitch together for a kid from Carney, all beside an endless heap of replacement buttons, some still in their individual glassine bags. A coffeemaker rested on a tower of plates, propped up on one end to keep coffee from flooding the counters. — Holly Black

Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father's place. That's not him, we said to our mother, That's not him, but our mother no longer seemed to hear us ... "Did you ... she said. "Every day," he replied. Then he got down on his knees and he took us into his arms ... — Julie Otsuka

The real question today is not when human life begins, but, what is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law - the same right we have. — Ronald Reagan

I miss my mother."
Mrs. Norton touched Trudy's shoulder in silent sympathy.
"She never had a chance to see any of her daughters get married."
Trudy laid the veil on the bed.
"It's hard to completely enjoy your wedding day when your mother isn't with you."
"Your mother did see your sisters wed and I'm sure she'll be with you today."
Trudy looked at the woman, astonished she hadn't received a more pious answer from a minister's wife.
She pointed a finger upward. "I know she's in heaven."
Mrs. Norton gently folded Trudy's hand until her palm rested on her chest, "In heaven and in your heart, love never fails, my dear Ms. Bower. I know it's not the same as feeling your mother's arms around you on such a special day, nevertheless, I'm sure she's sending you plenty of love. — Debra Holland

In the soft and gentle arms of a mother's love,
children can come to know the voice of the Lord. — Dwan J. Young

What do we want from our mothers when we are children? Complete submission. Oh, it's very nice and rational and respectable to say that a woman has every right to her life, to her ambitions, to her needs, and so on--it's what I've always demanded myself--but as a child, no, the truth is it's a war of attrition, rationality doesn't come into it, not one bit, all you want from your mother is that she once and for all admit that she is your mother and only your mother, and that her battle with the rest of life is over. She has to lay down arms and come to you. And if she doesn't do it, then it's really a war, and it was a war between my mother and me. Only as an adult did I come to truly admire her--especially in the last, painful years of her life--for all that she had done to claw some space in this world for herself. — Zadie Smith

She thoroughly felt the pitch and roll of the ship as it traveled southerly across the ocean. It was a pleasant feeling, an ancient one that every person who had ever loved the sea had felt and cherished
to be rocked to sleep, as if in a mother's arms or in a cradle. — Victoria Kahler

My mother is a realist, and she's had biological and adoptive children, and she said it's no different: No matter what, they're putting a stranger into your arms. You don't know them yet. — Katherine Heigl

when my mother was pregnant with her second child i was four i pointed at her swollen belly confused at how my mother had gotten so big in such little time my father scooped me in his tree trunk arms and said the closest thing to god on this earth is a woman's body it's where life comes from and to have a grown man tell me something so powerful at such a young age changed me to see the entire universe rested at my mother's feet — Rupi Kaur

Rosy lifted her arm, tried to say something, then pointed at the cafe, held her head, covered her mouth and - humiliation of humiliations - she began to cry. Right there in the street. "I'm so confused," she said but it came out as a great honking wail.
"Come here, you silly girl," Phyllis said.
The woman put her arms around Rosy, patted her back, and for the first time in forever, Rosy allowed herself to just cry.
A young mother with twins in a pram passed them. The children's eyes tracked Rosy for a second before their faces crumpled and they started to cry too.
"I'm sorry," Rosy said, and flapped her arms. "I'm sorry. — R.G. Manse

The only way that I have seen to keep teenagers out of one another's arms is to give them a bigger, more wonderful goal to offset all the distractions common to their youth. For a young man, that goal should include preparing for a delightful and profitable career, doing something he really enjoys doing. For a young woman, it includes preparing to be the ideal wife, mother and administrative assistant such a passionate and goal-oriented young man will need — Gregg Harris

Bree stared down at Bernardo's still form. The monitor was the only sound in the room apart from his deep breathing. Alessandro had gone down to the cafeteria with Will and Gianni to grab something to eat before they left for home. Bree lied and told him that she wanted to check in with Tina and her mother Roxanna for a few minutes before they left. Even unconscious, the son of a bitch was formidable and Bree felt nervous around him. "Why don't you do everyone a favour and just die already?" Bree said. No response. Bree sneered and shook her head, turning to leave. "You could always smother me with a pillow," a groggy voice said behind her, making her heart nearly stop. Bree whirled around wide-eyed and met Bernardo's dark gaze. She forced herself to shrug and crossed her arms. "Do you think Alessandro would forgive you for murdering his father?" Bernardo asked. They both knew the answer to that. — E. Jamie

In that instant, your billboard careened ashore on a wall of water, cracking the back of my head. I reached for balance and touched what I thought was a puppy. Then you grabbed my finger. My God, I thought. It's a baby. I fainted dead away. That's how Macon found us the next day - me unconscious on half a billboard, you nestled in my arms, nursing on the pocket of my uniform. The half billboard said: " ... Cafe ... Proprietor." Our path seemed clear.
I will always love your mother for letting you go, Soldier, and I will always love you for holding on.
Love, the Colonel.
PS: I apologize for naming you Moses. I didn't know you were a girl until it was too late. — Sheila Turnage

Perhaps we should spice up our next wager."
A wary look entered her blue eyes. "How?"
"By wagering your mother's necklace against ... your clothing."
She froze, her arms over her head, her eyes wide. "My clothing?"
"Yes. Your gown-against your mother's neckace." His body was already hard at the thought of her standing before him in nothing but her chemise and stockings.
Sophia lowered her arms with a teasing smile. "I doubt it will fit you."
A surprised laugh broke from him. "That would be a sight. But to be crystal clear, if I win this hand, you will disrobe for me. — Karen Hawkins

Cash smiles at them and then turns to face me, leaning forward a little on the bar. His eyes meet mine and one brow rises in that holy mother of hell-sexy way, then he mutters, "You've got one chance to make my mouth water."
I suck in a breath. And chills break out down my arms.
Damn, he's good! — M. Leighton

No doubt Richard's father, like my mother, had once held his infant son in his arms, looked into the eyes of his child's mother, and believed they would move into the future together with love. The fact that they didn't was a weight each of us carried, as every child does, probably, whose parents no longer live under the same roof. Wherever it is you make your home, there is always this other place, this other person, calling to you. Come to me. Come back. — Joyce Maynard

Why should a family with eight rambunctious children bother owning anything that could be damaged? They sat on the arms of their mother's overstuffed chair while she read to them, and they hung over the back of it, and they pinched and plucked at its plushy hide. — Marilynne Robinson

If one of the little Pontellier boys took a tumble whilst at play, he was not apt to rush crying to his mother's arms for comfort; he would more likely pick himself up, wipe the water out of his eyes and the sand out of his mouth, and go on playing. — Kate Chopin

I think I'm going to wear blue to the wedding. I saw this gorgeous dress on sale at Macy's the other day. I think I have a coupon," Mom tells Liz.

"Oh hell no! I already told you I was going to wear blue, you whore. You can't wear the same color as me, that's tacky," Liz complains.

Oh my God, this is not happening right now.

"Fuck your mother. I'm wearing blue. I already found my dress," Mom argues.

"I'm the mother of the bride. The mother of the f**king bride! That means it's up to me!" Liz fires back.

"Claire, I think you would look lovely in blue," Tyler pipes in.

Mom turns to face Tyler and folds her arms on top of the table. "When I'm finished neutering you, I'm going to take your tiny little neuticles and light them on fire. — Tara Sivec

How should we manage our mind, which is inherently just like the open sky? It's actually very simple. Let it do as it wishes, just as you would let go of a naughty child struggling to get free from your arms. As long as you know you can keep your eye on him at all times, you certainly shouldn't try to tie him up or confine him. You also shouldn't try to get his attention with candy, biscuits, or toys because, as with all naughty children, it's only natural that he will eventually return to his mother's embrace. When mother and child are united, that is similar to when your mind has returned again to its proper place. — Shang Rinpoche

In stark contrast to two nights ago, when I felt Peeta was a million miles away, I'm struck by his immediacy now. As we settle in, he pulls my head down to use his arm as a pillow; the other rests protectively over me even when he goes to sleep. No one has held me like this in such a long time. Since my father died and I stopped trusting my mother, no one else's arms have made me feel this safe. — Suzanne Collins

In December, at the darkest time of the year, Olenka delivered triplets. Mother-in-law came by and called Benedikt in to come look at the brood. She congratulated him. He lay there, empty and heavy-hearted, waiting for the signal; and there wasn't any. All right then, he'd go take a look.
There were three kids: one appeared to be female, she was tiny and cried. Another seemed to be a boy, but it was hard to tell right off. The third
well, you couldn't figure out what it was
to look at, it was a fuzzy, scary-looking ball. All round-like, but with eyes. They picked it up in their arms to rock it, and started singing: "Bye Baby Bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting ... " and with a shove it pushed away, jumped on the floor, rolled off, and disappeared into a crack in the floor. They all rushed to catch it, their hands outstretched. They moved stools and benches
but no luck. — Tatyana Tolstaya

An embrace from him left scratches on my back that sometimes wept blood, yet my brothers and I fought to be the first in his arms when he returned from work each evening. The same injuries inflicted in anger would have sent us crying to our mother's skirts. I fell asleep each night feeling his hand on my back like a shield.
Fathers. — Christopher Moore

I am lying in the same bed where my mother died so long ago; on the same mattress,
beneath the same black wool coverlet she wrapped us in to sleep. I slept beside her, her
little girl, in the special place she made for me in her arms.
I think I can still feel the calm rhythm of her breathing; the palpitations and sighs that
soothed my sleep ... I think I feel the pain of her death ... But that isn't true.
Here I lie, flat on my back, hoping to forget my loneliness by remembering those times.
Because I am not here just for a while. And I am not in my mother's bed but in a black box
like the ones for burying the dead. Because I am dead.
I sense where I am, but I can think ... — Juan Rulfo

Sleep tight in the secure arms of your daddy. I know I have. He'll be good at making you feel safe.
When you're scared, let him remind you that he's right there, always ready to hold you when you need it.
More than anything, I want to tell you this: You are a fighter. You are strong. You are brave. You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. This world is yours to make the most of, and I believe you will live a life so full of happiness that I will feel it from above.
Never let others bring you down. Their words don't change who you are. You are in control of who you are. You, my sweet Lila Kate, are your mother's daughter. We fight for what we want and what we believe in. We don't listen to others, and we are secure in who we are. Show the world how amazing Lila Kate Carter is, and climb mountains, baby girl. Climb them all. — Abbi Glines

Celaena Sardothien wasn't in league with Aelin Ashryver Galathynius.
Celaena Sardothien was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir to the throne and rightful Queen of Terranes.
Celaena was Aelin Galathynius, the greatest living threat to Adarlan, the one person who could raise an army capable of standing against the king. Now, she was also the one person who knew the secret source of the king's power - and who sought a way to destroy it.
And he had just sent her into the arms of her strongest potential allies: to the homeland of her mother, the kingdom of her cousin, and the domain of her aunt, Queen Maeve of the Fae.
Celaena was the lost Queen of Terrasen.
Chaol sank to his knees. — Sarah J. Maas

But no matter how long a father has been in the ground, he always speaks to his children. A person forever remembers their mother's arms and their father's words. — D.J. Molles

I feel a thread tugging me again, but this time I know that it isn't some sinister force dragging me toward death.
This time I know it's my mother's hand, drawing me into her arms.
And I go gladly into her embrace. — Veronica Roth

Long past sunset an old blind woman sat on a camp-stool with her back to the stone wall of the Union of London and Smith's Bank, clasping a brown mongrel tight in her arms and singing out loud, not for coppers, no, from the depths of her gay wild heart - her sinful, tanned heart - for the child who fetches her is the fruit of sin, and should have been in bed, curtained, asleep, instead of hearing in the lamplight her mother's wild song, where she sits against the Bank, singing not for coppers, with her dog against her breast. — Virginia Woolf

The smoky shadow of a young woman with long hair fell to the ground as Bertha had done, straightened up, and looked at him . . . and Harry, his arms shaking madly now, looked back into the ghostly face of his mother. "Your father's coming. . . ." she said quietly. "Hold on for your father. . . . It will be all right. . . . Hold on. . . ." And he came . . . first his head, then his body . . . tall and untidy-haired like Harry, the smoky, shadowy form of James Potter blossomed from the end of Voldemort's wand, fell to the ground, and straightened like his wife. He walked — J.K. Rowling

The child's arms around her, hugging her as a daughter hugs her mother. Joyfully. Spontaneously. The most beautiful of all. The most beautiful of all. — Eowyn Ivey

The Italian comes to his table with the same open heart with which a child falls into his mother's arms, with the same easy feeling of being in the right place. — Marcella Hazan

I reach for Prim in the twilight, clamp my hand on her leg and pull myself over to her. Her voice remains steady as she croons to Buttercup. "It's all right, baby, it's all right. We'll be OK down there."
My mother wraps her arms around us. I allow myself to feel young for a moment and rest my head on her shoulder. — Suzanne Collins

Herding them all toward the basement, their father paused at the dining-room window, pulled back the curtain and shone the beam through the window and out into the darkness until it caught the yawning base of the doomed tree. After only a quick glimpse, a glimpse that was like a gulp of foul air, Jacob pulled at his mother's hand to draw her to safety. But Michael lingered, and even Annie squirmed out of her father's arms to stand by the window, her two hands on the painted sill. The roots reared out of the black ground, the trunk leaned and then straightened, the long branches swung this way and that. Their mother patted Jacob's hand to soothe him. On their way through the kitchen she took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator and the remaining paper cups from their picnic. They followed their father's flashlight down the wooden steps. It was a tunnel of light and it seemed to draw — Alice McDermott

I told them that when you were born, God was so delighted that He sent a hundred angels to kiss you while you were in your mother's arms. Every place where the angels kissed you, they left a tiny dot. That way, if you ever forget how greatly you are loved by God, all you have to do is look at your skin, and you will remember. — Robin Jones Gunn