Quotes & Sayings About Being Your Mother

The stigma of being an unmarried mother was something we can't comprehend today. It was not uncommon that you'd go off somewhere to have your child, then give it up for adoption. — Michael Ashcroft

It is strange to hear your mother talk about being human because, honestly, it's too easy to forget. — Joe Dunthorne

Shonda, how do you do it all?
The answer is this: I don't.
Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life....
That is the trade-off.
That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous. — Shonda Rhimes

You need to be able to nurture yourself in order to be a good mother, good at your job, good at servicing your community. I really believe women can do it all, but they can't do it all at the expense of their health, their sleep, and their sense of well-being. — Arianna Huffington

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

It's okay to be proud of your good English. But don't be proud of being poor at your Mother tongue. Only the scum of the earth do that. — Manasa Rao

Being a mother is the perfect experience for any writer. You learn how to not waste time. The writing hours become incredibly precious and concentrated because the rest of your day is completely packed with diapers, edible liquid foods that look like pooh, tiny bathtubs, and unconditional love. — Chiara Barzini

She was too proud to eat her share of what little food we had. She told me she had. She swore she did. But every time I complained about being so hungry it hurt, she always offered me a nut or a partially rotted turnip, claiming she had just found two and already ate hers."

Rose sniffled and wiped her eyes again.

"After she was gone, I left my pride in that little hut and begged my way to Medford. I'd do anything. Once you've spent an afternoon chasing a fly around your house for dinner, once you've eaten spiders whole and drooled over worms found while burying your mother with your bare hands, there's nothing beneath you. All I wanted was to live-I'd forgotten everything else. A clod of dirt doesn't have dreams. A bit of broken stone doesn't understand hope. Each morning, all I wanted was to see the next dawn. — Michael J. Sullivan

Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plentitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at your mother's breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars. — Hermann Hesse

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.

Every human being is a universe within themselves. Your mother and father participated with God to create a soul who would never cease to exist. Your parents, as cocreators, supplied the stuff, genetics and more, uniquely combined to form a masterpiece, not flawless but still astounding; and we took from their hands what they brought to us, submitting to their timing and history and added what only we could bring to them- life. You were conceived, a living wonder who exploded into being. — Wm. Paul Young

The principals are quite simple. We can love people who treat us well. We cannot love people who treat us badly because, treating someone badly is not a virtue and we can only love virtue. I don't think that's controversial. I mean, there is no marriage therapist that I can imagine in the world who would say to a woman being beaten, humiliated, verbally abused, or completely ignored by her husband, "You just need to love him more. You need to work at making him happier." That would be sadistic in the extreme to say to someone.
So, in the same way I say, if anyone, I don't care if they are your priest, god, father, mother, or your Siamese twin cousin coming out of your elbow or ass. I don't care. If someone is treating you badly, that is not good for you. The solution is not you being so great that you both become better. That's not a realistic solution. — Stefan Molyneux

Charlotte sighed inwardly. She knew her mother was serious when she started referring to shellfish. What did that mean, anyway? What's so great about the world being your oyster? Does that mean it's really hard to open, and when you do, you have something slimy and gross on the inside? — Anne Ursu

When you're whirling free of the mother ship, when you cut your ropes, slip your chain, step off the map, go absent without leave, scram, vamoose, whatever; suppose that it's then, and only then, that you're actually free to act! To lead the life nobody tells you how to live, or when, or why. In which nobody orders you to go forth and die for them, or for god, or comes to get you because you broke one of the rules, or because you're one of the people who are, for reasons which unfortunately you can't be given, simply not allowed. Suppose you've got to go through the feeling of being lost, into the chaos and beyond; you've got to accept the loneliness, the wild panic of losing your moorings, the vertiginous terror of the horizon spinning round and round like the edge of a coin tossed in the air. — Salman Rushdie

Your relationship with your brother will be, in many ways, the most complex and bewildering of all the interpersonal connections you will form. An older brother is both authority and peer, friend and bitter enemy, partner and rival, and will play these contradictory roles to varying degrees throughout your life. At this point the rivalry is most prominent, owing to the difference in age and the resentment your brother feels toward you monopolizing your mother's attention. Try to remember, in the face of the poor treatment you receive at his hands, that more than a pure desire to cause you harm or pain, this is an effort on his part to win back some of that attention, even if it's only through being scolded and punished. — Ron Currie Jr.

Men of dreams, the lovers and the poets, are better in most things than the men of my sort; the men of intellect. You take your being from your mothers. You live to the full: it is given you to love with your whole strength, to know and taste the whole of life. We thinkers, though often we seem to rule you, cannot live with half your joy and full reality. Ours is a thin and arid life, but the fullness of being is yours; yours the sap of the fruit, the garden of lovers, the joyous pleasaunces of beauty. Your home is the earth, ours the idea of it. Your danger is to be drowned in the world of sense, ours to gasp for breath in airless space. You are a poet, I a thinker. You sleep on your mother's breast, I watch in the wilderness. On me there shines the sun; on you the moon with all the stars. Your dreams are all of girls, mine of boys - — Hermann Hesse

The mother eagle teaches her little ones to fly by making their nest so uncomfortable that they are forced to leave it and commit themselves to the unknown world of air outside. And just so does our God to us. He stirs up our comfortable nests, and pushes us over the edge of them, and we are forced to use our wings to save ourselves from fatal falling. Read your trials in this light, and see if you cannot begin to get a glimpse of their meaning. Your wings are being developed. — Hannah Whitall Smith

I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed. — Carol Rifka Brunt

If Christianity is true, this changes EVERYTHING. Christ's very last words to us in scripture were: "Behold, I make all things new." (Rev. 21:5) I hope you remember that most moving line in the most moving movie ever made, The Passion Of The Christ, when Christ turns to His mother on the way to Calvary, explaining the need for the Cross and the blood and the agony: "See, Mother, I make all things new." I hope you remember that line with your tear ducts, which connect to the heart, as well as with your ears, which connect to the brain. Christ changed every human being he ever met. In fact, He changed history, splitting it open like a coconut and inserting eternity into the split between B.C. and A.D. If anyone claims to have met Him without being changed, he has not met Him at all. When you touch Him, you touch lightning. — Peter Kreeft

I'm missing my baby's first swim lesson. If I am at my daughter's debut in her school musical, I am missing Sandra Oh's last scene ever being filmed at Grey's Anatomy. If I am succeeding at one, I am inevitably failing at the other. That is the trade-off. That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous. Something is always lost. Something is always missing. And yet. I want my daughters to see me and know me as a woman who works. I want that example set for them. — Shonda Rhimes

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

Language-lovers know that there is a word for every fear. Are you afraid of wine? Then you have oenophobia. Tremulous about train travel? You suffer from siderodromophobia. Having misgivings about your mother-in-law is pentheraphobia, and being petrified of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth is arachibutyrophobia. And then there's Franklin Delano Roosevelt's affliction, the fear of fear itself, or phobophobia. — Steven Pinker

I'd learned balance is internal; that there really wasn't one set formula for how to live your life nor how to handle the wife-mother-businesswoman juggling act. Maybe it was just being tuned in to every role and knowing when one or the other needed to be the focus. — Kaira Rouda

A couple of years ago, I read the findings of a study on the effects of divorced and separated parents talking negatively about their exes in the presence of their children. What I remember about the study most vividly is really just one thing: that it's devastating for a child to hear one parent speak ill of the other. In fact, so much so that the researchers found it was less psychologically damaging if a parent said directly to the child "You are a worthless piece of shit" than it was for a parent to say "Your mother/father is a worthless piece of shit."
I don't remember if they had any theories about why that was so, but it made sense to me. I think we all have something sturdier inside of us that rears up when we're being attacked that we simply can't call upon when someone we love is being attacked, especially if that someone is our parent, half of us-the primal other- and the person doing the attacking is the other half, the other primal other. — Cheryl Strayed

When you say 'mother' or 'father' you describe three different phenomena. There is the giant who made you and loomed over your early years; there is whatever more human-scale version might have been possible to perceive later and maybe even befriend; and there is the internalized version of the parent with whom you struggle- to appease, to escape, to be yourself, to understand and be understood by- and they make up a chaotic and contradictory trinity. — Rebecca Solnit

I said you weren't inconsequential. No one is. We change at least one person's life just by being born. If you don't believe me, go ask your mother. The fellows who write history books may not think that's so special. I happen to disagree. Isabelle and her family may be long gone, but because they lived, regardless of how small their lives may have been, I believe they are worth remembering, even if only by strangers.
- BEFORE EVER AFTER — Samantha Sotto

To this I replied, "I still think that my body is not merely a sensory appearance, for surely it came from my parents, who were its cause and condition."
He said, "If you think that your body came from your father and mother, then what are the beginning and end of these parents? What are their source, their location, their final destination? Tell me!"
I answered, "I think that they exist, but I am not aware of what they are. It seems to me that a physical body without parents is not possible."
He retorted, "Consider this. Who are the parents of the body in a dream, in the bardo, and in the hell realms?" With that, I arrived at the decision that this body has never existed, being simply a sensory experience. — Dudjom Lingpa

Happiness, she would explain, was when a person felt good, light, creative, content, loving and loved, and free. An unhappy person felt as if there were barriers crushing her desires and the talents she had inside. A happy woman was one who could exercise all kinds of rights, from the right to move to the right to create, compete, and challenge, and at the same time could be loved for doing so. Part of happiness was to be loved by a man who enjoyed your strength and was proud of your talents. Happiness was also about the right to privacy, the right to retreat from the company of others and plunge into contemplative solitude. Or sit by yourself doing nothing for a whole day, and not give excuses or feel guilty about it either. Happiness was to be with loved ones, and yet still feel that you existed as a separate being, that ou were not just there to make them happy. Happiness was when there was a balance between what you gave and what you took. — Fatema Mernissi

You don't belong here if you are unhappy," she continued. "Your mother makes you hateful, and you make her hateful. It doesn't matter if she's your mother. It's an accident of birth. It doesn't have to mean so much." ... "You belong where you have the best chance of being happy ... — Laura Moriarty

But it didn't matter. Because all it proved was that my mother was sitting out there coatless somewhere, waiting to come home to me. Even as he stared at it, the remark "Your mother's dead" sitting unspoken, like something rotten in our path that neither one of us wanted to be the first to pick up. Even after the kind of day I had had, being taunted at school, and then threatened with incarceration. Even know that when I went home I would face a house full of ghosts, it didn't matter to me. Instead I felt a little stab of joy. — Polly Horvath

Being a mother gives you an incredible feeling of empowerment, you think if I can go through such pain and that level of sleep and still operate and not be grumpy you can do anything. It can be quite scary, you can't function your brain, forget your vocabulary. — Anna Friel

That is one of the first things my family, my mother and my grandfather, had taught me about acting: 'Use your eyes!' Not being able to do that physical aspect of it, and having to put it all into your voice? That was a little bit of a challenge. — Keith Coogan

I hate it when she does that. There's nothing more humiliating than being smacked by your crazy mother in front of your friends. — Susan Ee

Sometimes, especially as women, we don't feel comfortable giving ourselves that credit. We're selfless in the best ways. But that can be dangerous too. You need to feel comfortable with affirming the greatness of who you are as a partner, a wife, a mother, a person. You are great. What you have to offer is great. When you give your time, your love, your respect, you deserve respect in return. You deserve comfort, you deserve honesty, and you deserve to feel safe. That's what relationships are supposed to be about - a place where you feel good, right? — Jennifer Lopez

Those few seconds when you're awake but empty. You forget where you are. What you are now, what you were before. It's all breath and heartbeat and blood moving. Like being in your mother's womb again. The peace of the void. — Rick Yancey

So don't be sad that you're able to keep on living without your mother being here, it just means she did her job. — T.A. Williams

You looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people. — Sylvia Plath

Well,' you may ask, 'how may I know when I am in love?'

. . . George Q. Morris [who later became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, gave this reply]: 'My mother once said that if you meet a girl in whose presence you feel a desire to achieve, who inspires you to do your best, and to make the most of yourself, such a young woman is worthy of your love and is awakening love in your heart. — David O. McKay

You're in a terrible spot. It's too late for you to retreat but too soon to act. All you can do is witness. You're in the miserable position of an infant who cannot return to the mother's womb, but neither can he run around and act. All an infant can do is witness and listen to the stupendous tales of action being told to him. You are at that precise point now. You cannot go back to the womb of your old world, but you cannot act with power either. For you there is only witnessing acts of power and listening to tales of power. — Carlos Castaneda

It was no good being a mother. She wanted to start a website, a public-awareness campaign, a newsletter, to get the word out that if you were a woman and you had a child, you lost everything, you would be held hostage by love: a terrorist who would only be satisfied when you surrendered your entire future. — Joe Hill

You're pretty full of yourself. You're marveling at the tragic spectacle of Caleb Trask - Caleb the
magnificent, the unique. Caleb whose suffering should have its Homer. Did you ever think of yourself
as a snot-nose kid - mean sometimes, incredibly generous sometimes? Dirty in your habits, and
curiously pure in your mind. Maybe you have a little more energy than most, just energy, but outside
of that you're very like all the other snot-nose kids. Are you trying to attract dignity and tragedy to
yourself because your mother was a whore? And if anything should have happened to your brother,
will you be able to sneak for yourself the eminence of being a murderer, snot-nose? — John Steinbeck

No, you look like the beauty you are, and you know it. You have that gift, which our mother had, of growing older and becoming more lovely. Your features have changed from being merely those of a pretty girl to being those of a beautiful woman with a face like a carving. When you are laughing and dancing with Edward, you could pass for twenty, but when you are still and thoughtful, you are as lovely as the statues they are carving in Italy. No wonder women loathe you. — Philippa Gregory

The voice went into his head, bored down through his memories, riffled through his fears, found the right levers, battened onto them, and pulled. In Moist's case, it found Frau Shambers. In the second year at school, you were precipitated out of the warm, easygoing kindergarten of Frau Tissel, smelling of finger paint, playdough, and inadequate toilet training, and onto the cold benches governed by Frau Shambers, smelling of Education. It was as bad as being born, with the added disadvantage that your mother wasn't there. Moist — Terry Pratchett

It's okay to kiss people when you love them."
"I don't love your mother," I tell her. "Not like that, anyway."
"You give her all your french fries, even when she won't give you back onion rings," Sophie says. "And when you say her name it sounds different."
"How?"
Sophie thinks. "Like it's covered in blankets."
"I do not say your mother's name like it's covered in blankets. And I don't always give her my french fries, because you're right, she doesn't share."
"But you still don't yell at her when she's not being fair," Sophie points out. "Because you don't want to hurt her feelings." She slips her hand into mine and repeats, "You love her. — Jodi Picoult

My mother was addicted to being rich, to servants and unlimited charge accounts, to giving lavish dinner parties, to taking frequent first-class trips to Europe. So one might say she was tormented by withdrawal symptoms all through the Great Depression. She was acculturated! Acculturated persons are those who find that they are no longer treated as the sort of people they thought they were, because the outside world has changed. An economic misfortune or a new technology, or being conquered by another country or political faction, can do that to people quicker than you can say "Jack Robinson." As Trout wrote in his "An American Family Marooned on the Planet Pluto": "Nothing wrecks any kind of love more effectively than the discovery that your previously acceptable behavior has become ridiculous." He said in conversation at the 2001 clambake: "If I hadn't learned how to live without a culture and a society, acculturation would have broken my heart a thousand times." *** — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Yes, men are pigs. Except your brother, of course. He's actually a decent human being. Almost a woman.
-Jillian's mother — Gena Showalter

As the mother's womb holds us for ten months, making us ready, not for the womb itself, but for life, just so, through our lives, we are making ourselves ready for another birth ... Therefore look forward without fear to that appointed hour- the last hour of the body, but not of the soul ... That day, which you fear as being the end of all things, is the birthday of your eternity. — Seneca The Younger

You want to do something for the Lord ... do it. Whatever you feel needs to be done, even though youre shaking in your boots, youre scared to death
take the first step forward. The grace comes with that one step and you get the grace as you step. Being afraid is not a problem; its doing nothing when you feel afraid. — Mother Angelica

But she's the Pastor's wife ... Do you not understand the irony of this whole situation?" he said clearly enjoying himself. "One evil being at your door, kissing the hand of your adopted mother who's married to the Pastor with whom you live. You, the sweet, innocent, unscathed mate of my twin brother who renounces what he is, but is also ... an evil being. I mean, you can't write this stuff. — Shelly Crane

Roosevelt could always keep ahead with his work, but I cannot do it, and I know it is a grievous fault, but it is too late to remedy it. The country must take me as it found me. Wasn't it your mother who had a servant girl who said it was no use for her to try to hurry, that she was a "Sunday chil" and no "Sunday chil" could hurry? I don't think I am a Sunday child, but I ought to have been; then I would have had an excuse for always being late. — William Howard Taft

When you become a mother, it's easy to believe your life no longer belongs to you. In an instant, your most pressing objective shifts. No longer does it matter whether your hair and makeup are perfect, not when you have to worry about whether the human being you brought into this world is hungry or sick or unhappy. It's easy to lose yourself in the day-to-day needs of others when you become a mother. — Cassia Leo

Growing up in Fitzgerald, I lived in an intense microcosm, where your neighbor knows what you're going to do even before you do, where you can recognize a family gene pool by the lift of an eyebrow, or the length of a neck, or a way of walking. What is said, what is left to the imagination, what is denied, withheld, exaggerated-all these secretive, inverted things informed my childhood. Writing the stories that I found in the box, I remember being particularly fascinated by secrets kept in order to protect someone from who you are. That protection, sharpest knife in the drawer, I absorbed as naturally as a southern accent. At that time, I was curious to hold up to the light glimpses of the family that I had so efficiently fled. We were remote-back behind nowhere-when I was growing up, but even so, enormous social change was about to crumble foundations. Who were we, way far South? "We're south of everywhere," my mother used to lament. — Frances Mayes

I am through with the four of you being so cavalier about your prospects for marriage and a future. You will all attend the house party and, more so, you will all enjoy it." "You cannot force us to enjoy it, Mother," Kit said with a smile. "You forget that I'm a duchess, Christopher. I can do whatever I like." She — Sarah MacLean

My daughter has a problem picking things up in her room. So if you leave your clothes on the floor, we put them in a trash bag. She has to earn them back by being tidy. I'm a disciplinarian. Guy's the spoiler. — Madonna Ciccone

Bipolar robs you of that which is you. It can take from you the very core of your being and replace it with something that is completely opposite of who and what you truly are. Because my bipolar went untreated for so long, I spent many years looking in the mirror and seeing a person I did not recognize or understand. Not only did bipolar rob me of my sanity, but it robbed me of my ability to see beyond the space it dictated me to look. I no longer could tell reality from fantasy, and I walked in a world no longer my own. — Alyssa Reyans

The formula I've figured out: Stop being so damn picky and let go of the mental image of an ideal; talk to more strangers, because it builds confidence and helps you feel more connected; be open to every opportunity, and when you do meet someone you like, keep dating around. And there's the mother of all lessons-the one I'm still working on: follow your instincts and even if you're wrong about him (or her), you'll know better for the next time. — Rachel Machacek

I think a lot of people, but particularly a lot of women, get to this stage when I'd say they're over 50. We face a lot of hard judgment from the world, we women. If you're a full-time mother, you should be out working. If you're out working, your kids must be being overlooked. — Anna Quindlen

Daughters-in-law, notice the beauty of the rug that your mother-in-law spent a lifetime weaving. Remember that her pattern is mostly firmly established-no need to suggest improvements. Be kinder than necessary, being mindful that the piece of art it took her a lifetime to weave-her masterpiece-she gave to you to keep you warm at night. — Glennon Doyle Melton

If I die, don't take this too hard," she counseled them, "death is only part of things bigger than we can imagine. Our brains are just starting the greatness, to learn how to do things like flying. What next? You will see, and you will see that your mother is of the design. And I will always be made of things, and things will always be made of me. Nothing can get rid of me because I am already included into the pattern. — Louise Erdrich

I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. — Terry Pratchett

You must feel an almost pathological need - understandably - to stand guard between your son and the world." "Yeah, it's called being a mother." Ma nearly snarls it. — Emma Donoghue

I observed an eighteen-year-old friend of one of our daughters talking to his mother on the telephone. As he hung up the phone in frustration he said, "She makes me so angry, she's always telling me what to think and where to go and how to do things." He was obviously upset and filled with anger. I told him he had one of two choices. He could either continue to practice being right, or practice being kind. If you insist on being right you will argue, get frustrated, angry, and your problem will persist with your mom, I explained. If you simply practice being kind, you can remind yourself that this is your mom, she's always been that way, she will very likely stay that way, but you are going to send her love instead of anger when she starts in with her routine. A simple statement of kindness such as, "That's a good point, Mom, I'll think about it," and you have a spiritual solution to your problem. — Wayne W. Dyer

Your identity should not be fully defined by what you do, by being a manager, a wife, a mother of children or a computer programmer — Sunday Adelaja

His mother hated his father. Perhaps being hated by your wife was something he inherited. — James Fant

Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you'll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you'll be tempted to say to the people around you, how can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is? — Daniel Quinn

Mothering your man is not sexy for you or for him. If you want your man to "start being a man", start being his lover not his mother. — Miya Yamanouchi

It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority - a majority, mark you; not all - of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"

"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.

"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage. — Iain M. Banks

One Monday, just for sport, Charlie grabbed an eggplant that a spectacularly wizened granny was going for, but instead of twisting it out of his hand with some mystic kung fu move as he expected, she looked him in the eye and shook her head - just a jog, barely perceptible really - it might have been a tic, but it was the most eloquent of gestures. Charlie read it as saying: O White Devil, you do not want to purloin that purple fruit, for I have four thousand years of ancestors and civilization on you; my grandparents built the railroads and dug the silver mines, and my parents survived the earthquake, the fire, and a society that outlawed even being Chinese; I am mother to a dozen, grandmother to a hundred, and great-grandmother to a legion; I have birthed babies and washed the dead; I am history and suffering and wisdom; I am a Buddha and a dragon; so get your fucking hand off my eggplant before you lose it. — Christopher Moore

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant "government of the people" but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term "people" to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America's problem is not its betrayal of "government of the people," but the means by which "the people" acquired their names. This — Ta-Nehisi Coates

My mother is a big believer in being responsible for your own happiness. She always talked about finding joy in small moments and insisted that we stop and take in the beauty of an ordinary day. When I stop the car to make my kids really see a sunset, I hear my mother's voice and smile. — Jennifer Garner

The reindeer are immortal. They are, in fact, the eight demiurges of reindeer-kind, and this accounts for their flying. Their names might sound whimsical, but they are the closest the human tongue can come to approximating the true names of the caribou lords. Rudolph, far from being the adorable, earnest fellow of the tale, is in fact Ruyd-al-Olafforid, the All-Destroying Flame of the Yukon. His mother was Kali and his father was an ice floe. His nose appears red because his body is full of coals, and his eyes flare with a terrible conflagration of the soul. The tips of his antlers are like candles in the snowy wind. He is not vengeful, but he is the light in the dark of winter, consuming and giving life at the same time. Your carrots only make the lord of flame stronger. — Catherynne M Valente

Keep Giving Jesus to the people, not by words but by your example, by being in love with Jesus, by radiating holiness and spreading his fragrance of love everywhere you go. Just keep the joy of Jesus as your strength, be happy and at peace. — Mother Teresa

Then he just blurted it out, with no preparation. 'The truth of it is that whether your mother arranged our marriage, or whether it was all an illusion, I must be horribly obtuse, because I can't talk myself out of being in love with you. — Eloisa James

You have to see and meet God in this life.
Don't let this life go by and miss discovering the Supreme One.
You will find him inside as your constant being.
Pray: Holy mother, holy father, holy spirit,
don't give me the illusion that even one second belongs to me.
All is you. I, also, am you and yours.
For only like this does your life stand the chance to be miraculous. — Mooji

I called her Mrs. Bennington at her insistence. When I'd referred to her as Ms. Bennington, she'd nearly bitten my head off. She was not one of your liberated women. She liked being a wife and mother. I was glad for her, it meant more freedom for the rest of us. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Are you being a good boy for your mum?"
Conor's grandma pinched Conor's cheeks so hard he swore she was going to draw blood.
"He's been very good, Ma," Conor's mother said, winking at him from behind his grandma, her favorite blue scarf tied around her head. "So there's no need to inflict quite so much pain. — Patrick Ness

Her death has had a huge effect on me. It felt like a big hole appeared on my left side - apparently your left side is your mother - which I thought could never be filled. Now I think what you have to do is fill it with yourself because your mother is part of you. I'm easing into that space, using it and being comforted by it. — Imelda Staunton

emptying out of my mother's belly
was my first act of disappearance
learning to shrink for a family
who likes their daughters invisible
was the second
the art of being empty
is simple
believe them when they say
you are nothing
repeat it to yourself
like a wish
i am nothing
i am nothing
i am nothing
so often
the only reason you know
you're still alive is from the
heaving of your chest — Rupi Kaur

Your mother hollers that you're going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don't stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don't thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not
you vault down down the stairs and make a run for the corner.
Only if it's the last time you'll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you'd stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.
But the bus was barreling down our street so I ran. — Emmy Laybourne

The land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies. — Mary Brave Bird

Being a working mother is not easy, but I think it helps you choose what's important in your life. If I think about starting a new project
whether it be music, a movie or a fragrance
I always stop and think: Is this something I feel really passionate about? That way, if I'm not at home at least it's for something I really love, and my son can look up to that. — Christina Aguilera

I'm thinking that after last night you shouldn't have to spend your morning in a hospital finding out if my mother has tried to OD."
"And I'm thinking that after last night I want to be anywhere you are and if that means being in a hospital asking about your mother, then so be it. — Melina Marchetta

being the key word there." Her grin took the sting out of her words. Juan chuckled, patting her on the head. "You're getting more and more like your mother every day." Tilting her head, she batted her eyelashes several times. "You mean intelligent and beautiful?" "Mouthy and obstinate." He pointed at the carvings on the wall. "Whether you like it or not, this curse could mean trouble. — Ann Charles

If you try your best to be the best parent you can be, you will have done all that a human being can do and all that God expects you to do. — Jeffrey R. Holland

The problem with being an alpha is that you can never make the first move.
Makes you feel like you're taking advantage of your position. You have to wait until
the other person decides they want in."
Jim set the basket on the coffee table and crouched by me.
"And sometimes it seems like that person likes you, and you try to test the waters,
so you try to tell her how you feel, that she matters and that you want to be with her
and you're concerned about her safety. And every time you do that, she waves her
arms around and accuses you of being a controlling alpha asshole. So you back off
and hope you didn't completely fuck it up."
He was close, too close. I just stared at him. What was happening ... "Why are
you telling me this?"
His voice was low and smooth. "That time when I told you it didn't matter what
your mother thought about your looks ... "
"Aha ... "
"I meant it," he said. "Because I think you're beautiful. — Ilona Andrews

With being a mother, I feel like you choose how you spend your time so much more carefully - which is a good thing. — Sarah Polley

At the time I thought what I had with you and your mother was better than nothing. But if you can't tell the truth to the people you care about the most, eventually you stop being able to tell the truth to yourself. — Cassandra Clare

Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child. — Jodi Picoult

It is not a good feeling being right about something you have suspected when you finally gain undeniable confirmation that it's true. It is not the satisfying sensation of everything slipping into place for which you have yearned. It's more like, 'Oh, right.' The man who has been staying over your whole life long is your mother's lover. The reason Lucy seems off sometimes is that she's still drinking. You have always known this. The only thing that's mysterious is how you managed to think it mysterious. — Ariel Levy

The changes I saw in my body as a result of being pregnant now seem to pale in comparison to the changes I've seen in my personality as I have embraced motherhood. The ability to truly understand the pressures of motherhood cannot be understood unless you are a mother. You're not alone in this, Mom! Your value as a mother is unsurpassed. You haven't lost yourself; you've found who you were destined to become. You've been given lives to mold and an opportunity to prepare your children for the future. There is nothing "just a mom" about you. — Tracey Lanter Eyster

And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg.
Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter ... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold ... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle. — Alan Moore

Do not join encounter groups. If you enjoy being made to feel inadequate, call your mother. — Liz Smith

whole. I can't imagine anything more terrifying than losing Sophie. When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one. It doesn't — Jodi Picoult

One day it was about getting married that mother talked with me, and I said I was so glad that when you didn't like being married, or got tired of your husband, you could get Unmarried. — Eleanor Porter

Clary, you're an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don't. It's your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn't make you crazy - just different. There's nothing wrong with being different. — Cassandra Clare

Whether your mother is a novelist like mine or a third-generation military wife, the idea of a son or daughter being in mortal danger is terrifying. — Elliot Ackerman

With the birth of Akash, in his sudden, perfect presence, Ruma had felt awe for the first time in her life. He still had the power to stagger her at times
simply the fact that he was breathing, that all his organs were in their proper places, that blood flowed quietly and effectively through his small, sturdy limbs. He was her flesh and blood, her mother had told her in the hospital the day Akash was born. Only the words her mother used were more literal, enriching the tired phrase with meaning: "He is made from your meat and bone." It had caused Ruma to acknowledge the supernatural in everyday life. But death, too, had the power to awe, she knew this now-that a human being could be alive for years and years, thinking and breathing and eating, full of a million worries and feelings and thoughts, taking up space in the world, and then, in an instant, become absent, invisible. — Jhumpa Lahiri

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Ah, selfish. There's that word again." Sherry smirked. "It's been hurled at me many a time, because being a mother and wife is all about selflessness, see?" She imitated a perky, syrupy-sweet voice. "Giving up every molecule of your soul. If you want anything for yourself, you're accused of being selfish. Marriage and especially motherhood mean being condemned to play second fiddle your entire life. — Andrea Lochen

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you'd would wake up times and hope that the next day you'd be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home. — LeBron James