Job Of A Mother Quotes & Sayings

Chief security officer on an OPA ship was a half-assed kind of position, one part cop, one part efficiency expert, and pretty much all den mother to a crew of a thousand people with their own agendas and petty power struggles and opinions on how he should be doing his job better. — James S.A. Corey

There is no you in NewVillager, but there is a we. Your job thenceforth will be that of the bodhisattva, the guru, the gap-toothed docent with a serious thing for Whistler's Mother. There will be others, newervillagers than yourself, who never stood a chance either. Only through them do you stand any hope of tracing your footsteps back to where you began. — Daniel Levin Becker

Black is beautiful when it is a slum kid studying to enter college, when it is a man learning new skills for a new job, or a slum mother battling to give her kids a chance for a better life. But white is beautiful, too, when it helps change society to make our system work for black people also. White is ugly when it oppresses blacks-and so is black ugly when black people exploit other blacks. No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin. — Whitney M. Young

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

If you are living for an ideal and driving yourself as hard as you can to be perfect - at your job or as a mother or as a perfect wife - you lose the natural, slow rythmn of life. There's a rushing, trying to attain the ideal; the slower pace of the beat of the earth, the state where you simply are, is forgotten — Marion Woodman

You can quit a job. I can't quit being a mother. I'm a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are. Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever. Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends them out into the world, forever hostages. — Shonda Rhimes

Often, what makes my job so exciting is designing for the mother whose dream has been to wear one of my hats at her child's wedding. I feel as responsible for making her feel like a million dollars as I do for somebody in the public eye. — Philip Treacy

My mother taught me to be nice to everybody. And she said something before I left home. She said, 'I want you to always remember that the person you are in this world is a reflection of the job I did as a mother.' — Jason Segel

When I was forty, I was getting divorced, living in a low-class, dirty hotel in New York. My mother was dying of cancer. I owed $20,000. That was about the lowest. I came back to show business, and I couldn't get a job. I was turned down by every small-time agent in New York. — Rodney Dangerfield

There, just beyond his open palm, was our mother's face. I wasn't expecting it. We hadn't requested a viewing, and the memorial service was closed-coffin. We got it anyway. They'd shampooed and waved her hair and made up her face. They'd done a great job, but I felt taken, as if we'd asked for the basic carwash and they'd gone ahead and detailed her. Hey, I wanted to say, we didn't order this. But of course I said nothing. Death makes us helplessly polite. — Mary Roach

I used to wonder if a mother could see the shift when her child became an adult. I wondered if it was clinical, like at the onset of puberty; or emotional, like the first time his heart was broken; or temporal, like the moment he said I do. I used to wonder if maybe it was a critical mass of life experiences - graduation, first job, first baby - that tipped the balance; if it was the sort of thing you noticed immediately when you saw it, like a port-wine stain of sudden gravitas, or if it crept up slowly, like age in a mirror. Now I know: adulthood is a line drawn in the sand. At some point, your child will be standing on the other side. I — Jodi Picoult

My poor mother. Every time I get a job, she asks, 'Am I gonna have to watch you kiss someone again in this one?' and I say, 'You're probably gonna have to watch me kiss someone in most of them, Mom.' — Luke Bracey

I was asked why I did not give a rod with which to fish, in the hands of the poor, rather than give the fish itself as this makes them remain poor. So I told them: The people whom we pick up are not able to stand with a rod. So today I will give them fish and when they are able to stand, then I shall send them to you and you can give them the rod. That is your job. Let me do my work today. — Mother Teresa

Came to deeply regret giving President Bush the benefit of the doubt on that vote. He later asserted that the resolution gave him the sole authority to decide when the clock had run out on weapons inspections. On March 20, 2003, he decided that it had, and he launched the war, with the UN weapons inspectors pleading for just a few more weeks to finish the job. Over the years that followed, many Senators came to wish they had voted against the resolution. I was one of them. As the war dragged on, with every letter I sent to a family in New York who had lost a son or daughter, a father or mother, my mistake became more painful. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

Presently Arnaud folded the paper napkin, in the same careful way he always folded a table napkin, and said I ought to follow Chantal's suggestion and get a job in teaching a nursery school. (So Maman had mentioned that to Mme. Pons, too) I should teach until I had enough working time behind me to claim a pension. It would be good for me in my old age to have an income of my own. Anything could happen. He could be killed in a train crash or called up for a war. My father could easily be ruined in a lawsuit and die covered with debts. There were advantages to teaching, such as long holidays and reduced train fares.
"How long would it take?" I said. "Before I could stop teaching and get my pension."
"Thirty-five years," said Arnaud. "I'll ask my mother. She had no training, either, but she taught private classes. All you need is a decent background and some recommendations. — Mavis Gallant

One theme that runs through many [job hunting books] is just plain harmful: the advice to "just be yourself." Wrong. Remember that first day on your first job, when you went to get your first cup of coffee? You found the coffee machine, and there, stuck on the wall behind it, was a handwritten sign reading:
YOUR MOTHER DOESN'T WORK HERE
PICK UP AFTER YOURSELF
You thought, "Pick up after myself? Gee, I guess I've got to develop a new way of doing things." And so you started to observe and emulate the more successful professionals around you. You weren't born this way. You developed new skills and ways of conducting yourself, in effect creating a professional persona that enabled you to survive in the professional world. — Martin Yate

My father was a veteran and my mother a schoolteacher. They taught me the value of a good job and an honest day's work. — Stephen Pagliuca

I wanted to get out in the world, have a great job, make my mark, and see how far I could go. And I wanted to make good on the philosophy my mother drilled into us with all the subtlety of a Lady Gaga performance. I got it loud and clear. I would need to succeed, and then I could possibly be happy. — Karen Finerman

As a small child in England, I had this dream of going to Africa. We didn't have any money and I was a girl, so everyone except my mother laughed at it. When I left school, there was no money for me to go to university, so I went to secretarial college and got a job. — Jane Goodall

The job description of mother is clearly in need of revision. As it stands, the shifts are 24 hours, for a period of approximately 1,825 consecutive days. The benefits are sorely in need of amendment: no vacations, no sick leave, no lunch hours, no breaks. Moreover, it is the only unpaid position I know of that can result in arrest if you fail to show up for work. — Mary Blakely

Gathering wool, are we? (Ewan)
Nay, merely practicing irritating you, and by the looks of your face, I'd say I'm doing a rather remarkable job of it. My mother always says that any effort worth pursuing is worth pursuing well. (Nora) — Kinley MacGregor

The risk for a woman who considers her helpless children her "job" is that the children's growth toward self-sufficiency may be experienced as a refutation of the mother's indispensability, and she may unconsciously sabotage their growth as a result. — Letty Cottin Pogrebin

On the board was a list of words and phrases which her mother considered not suitable for use in college T-shirt design. She had been asked about them so often that in the end she had started a blacklist of banned words to which everyone could refer. Every time someone thought of a new one, she unflinchingly wrote it down ...
Rose read through the list, and turned back to her letter.
These are the words I learned to spell in Mummy's art class today, she wrote, and sighed a little as she began the tedious job of copying from the board. — Hilary McKay

Honestly, I have s much respect for single moms or anybody who finds themselves a single mother, but to even choose to be single mother is just so courageous to me. It is such a hard job to raise a child and be everything to that child without a partner. It's just admirable and courageous and brave and every other valiant word I can think of. I don't know if I could do it on my own. — Jennifer Lopez

Mothers seem to be in subtle competition with teachers. There is always an underlying fear that teachers will do a better job thanthey have done with their child ... But mostly mothers feel that their areas of competence are very much similar to those of the teacher. In fact they feel they know their child better than anyone else and that the teacher doesn't possess any special field of authority or expertise. — Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Perhaps I should have been a Negro. I suspect I would have been a rather large and terrifying one, continually pressing my ample thigh against the withered thighs of old white ladies in public conveyances a great deal and eliciting more than one shriek of panic. Then, too, if I were a Negro, I would not be pressured by my mother to find a good job, for no good jobs would be available. My mother herself, a worn old Negress, would be too broken by years of underpaid labor as a domestic to go out bowling at night. She and I could live most pleasantly in some moldy shack in the slums in a state of ambitionless peace, realizing contentedly that we were unwanted, that striving was meaningless. — John Kennedy Toole

I understand why you do your job," my mother said to me. "There's a sense of accomplishment when you take down someone bad. It's like being a police officer or being in the Army or being a mother. You have a responsibility to protect and keep order, and you do whatever it takes to get that done. — Janet Evanovich

Career mothers are not kidding anybody. Being a mom is the hardest job of all. You got to work to rest. — Sandy Duncan

Otto Cone as a man of seventy-plus years jumped into an open lift shaft and died. Now this was a subject which Alicia Cone, who would readily discuss the most taboo matters refused to touch upon. Why does a survivor of the camps live forty years then complete the job the monsters didn't get done? Does great evil eventually triumph no matter how strenuously it is resisted? Does it leave a sliver of ice in the blood working its way through until it reaches the heart? Or worse, can a man's death be incompatible with his life? Alicia, who's first response on hearing of her father's death had been fury, flung such questions as these at her mother, who stone-faced beneath a broad-brimmed black hat said only, You have inherited his lack of restraint my dear. — Salman Rushdie

They hate me because I am the worst thing possible. I am the bad mother.

But here's a secret: in America there are no good mothers. They simply don't exist. Always, there are a thousand ways to fail at this singularly important job. There are failures of the body and failures of the heart. The woman who is unable to breastfeed is a failure. The woman who screams for the epidural is a failure. The woman who picks up her child late knows from the teacher's cutting glance that she is a failure. The woman who shares her bed with her baby has failed. The woman who steels herself and puts on noise-canceling earphones to erase the screaming of her child the next room has failed just as spectacularly. They must all hang their heads in guilt and shame because they haven't done it perfectly, and motherhood is, if anything, the assumption of perfection. — Nayomi Munaweera

Watching this little scene makes my throat ache. It seems an apt metaphor for the role most men play--even in egalitarian modern marriages--as quasi-outsiders in their own families. Of course, men have always contributed importantly to the family, and our wives and children would miss us if we were gone. But there's also a tacit understanding that we are the expendable ones: if something evil comes through the front door, everyone knows whose job it is to die guarding the family's retreat out the back. Men are a little on the periphery of family life, cut off from the biologically precious mother and children as though by an invisible pane of glass. — Jonathan Gottschall

Imagine every aspect of your life - your job, your spouse, your kids, even your friends - but don't imagine the future you think you're heading for. Instead, imagine the future you desire most. Forget all the expectations everyone else has for you and concentrate on what you truly want. Visualize the road that will take you there. That's your path. That's where you belong in life ... None of the truly great in this world became that way by doing what they felt they had to do. If Isaac Newton had become a farmer like his mother wanted him to, or if Elvis would've listened when he was told to stick to truck driving, we'd know neither man today. We know them, because they had the courage to follow the path they envisioned. — J.M. Darhower

When you grow up with a mother who has to wash dishes and clean hotel rooms, you know the importance of having a job, and you can't be without a job for any length of time, or you will be without anything. — Edward P. Jones

While fathers are pleasant figureheads, there is a special bond between children and their mothers. 'Do you help your mother clean up the house?' I asked one girl of seven. 'No,' she sweetly replied, 'I help make the mess.' It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it. — Bill Cosby

I'm a mother myself, and sometimes mothers get a bad rap just because they've tried to do their job. Some people have more of a knack for it than others do, but almost all of it falls to, 'My mother's suffocating me.' Whatever. — Annie Potts

I mean, if somebody said to me, junior year of college, you can go anywhere, your old man's paying for it, I'd have been gone in a flash. But I had to work. Every summer my mother would say, 'Get that job and hold on to it until August 30.' — Chris Matthews

My mother's advertising firm specialized in women's accessories. All day long, under the agitated and slightly vicious eye of Mathilde, she supervised photo shoots where crystal earrings glistened on drifts of fake holiday snow, and crocodile handbags-unattended, in the back seats of deserted limousines-glowed in coronas of celestial light. She was good at what she did; she preferred working behind the camera rather than in front of it; and I knew she got a kick out of seeing her work on subway posters and on billboards in Times Square. But despite the gloss and sparkle of the job (champagne breakfasts, gift bags from Bergdorf's) the hours were long and there was a hollowness at the heart of it that-I knew-made her sad. — Donna Tartt

My mother, writing from France, admonished me to take care of my health as she had during the war. My head could be all set for the guillotine, and still my mother would scold me for forgetting my muffler. She never missed an opportunity to try and convince me that the world is a kindly place and that she'd done a good job in conceiving me. This alleged Providence was the great subterfuge of maternal thoughtlessness. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

If every mother in the United States could wrap her mind around her true value as a woman and mother, her life would never be the same. We would wake up every morning excited for the day rather feeling as though we'd been hit by a truck during the night. We would talk differently to our kids, fret less about our husbands' annoying habits, and speak with greater tenderness and clarity. We would find more contentment in our relationships, let means remarks roll off our backs, and leave work feeling confident in the job we performed. And best of all - we wouldn't obsess about our weight (can you imagine?), physical fitness, or what kind of home we live in. We would live a kinda of home we live in. We would live free from superficial needs because we would know deep in our hearts what we need and more importantly, what we don't need. Each of us would live a life of extraordinary freedom. — Meg Meeker

Marriage isn't a love affair. It isn't even a honeymoon. It's a job. A long hard job, at which both partners have to work, harder than they've worked at anything in their lives before. If it's a good marriage, it changes, it evolves, but it does on getting better. I've seen it with my own mother and father. But a bad marriage can dissolve in a welter of resentment and acrimony. I've seen that, too, in my own miserable and disastrous attempt at making another person happy. And it's never one person's fault. It's the sum total of a thousand little irritations, disagreements, idiotic details that in a sound alliance would simply be disregarded, or forgotten in the healing act of making love. Divorce isn't a cure, it's a surgical operation, even if there are no children to consider. — Rosamunde Pilcher

That was the old Ellen Gulden, the girl who would walk over her mother in golf shoes, who scared students away from writing seminars, who started work on Monday after graduating from Harvard with honors on a Thursday, who loved the moments in the office when she would look out at the impenetrable black of the East River, starred with the reflected lights of Queens, with only the cleaning crew for company, and think of her various superiors out at dinner parties and restaurants and her various similars out at downtown clubs or cheap but authentic places in Chinatown and say to herself, 'I'm getting ahead.' That Ellen Gulden, the one her boss suspected of using the dying-mother ploy to get more money or a better job title, would have covered every inch of [this datebook] with the frantic scribble of unexamined ambition. — Anna Quindlen

My mother wanted me to be a writer. But she was a child of the Depression and never understood that she wasn't poor. So, you know, the idea of not having a job, it would creep through. But she tried very hard to be subtle about it. — Richard Greenberg

My mother passed away when I was 14, so there were certain things I missed in terms of upbringing. Maybe my mother would have said, 'You have to get a real job.' I don't know because I didn't have that experience. My fortes in school were Spanish, sports, reading and theater. That's what they encouraged. — Joie Lee

You said I was afraid to come back to the Keep. Well - " I spread my arms wide, flinging drops of water onto Leif's green tunic " - here I am."
"You are here. I'll grant you that. But are you unafraid?"
"I already have a mother and a Story Weaver. Your job is to be the annoying older brother. Stick to what you know."
"Ohhh. I've hit a nerve. — Maria V. Snyder

Battles over job and career, over every picture published. She had never been ambitious out of vanity. All she ever wanted was to escape from her mother's world. Yes, she saw it with absolute clarity: no matter how enthusiastic she was about taking pictures, she could just as easily have turned her enthusiasm to any other endeavour. Photography was nothing but a way of getting at 'something higher' and living beside Thomas. — Milan Kundera

My mother was a mother. She didn't really work, apart from bringing us up, which a job in itself, but at an age where lots of people are thinking of retiring, so is having up to 20 or 30 engagements a day, and she's brilliant at it - she has always been brilliant with people. — Tom Parker Bowles

No one is going to try to fill my mother's shoes, what she did was fantastic. It's about making your own future and your own destiny and Kate will do a very good job of that. — Prince William

17,000 children starve on this planet every single day. That fact alone should blow any conscious person out of their chair. You know, my mother used to say that a woman's most important job is taking care of her children and her home. I laughed at that when I was younger, but I don't laugh at it anymore. I just realize that every child on the planet is one of our children, and the earth itself is our home. — Marianne Williamson

Rosie: I don't know what you're talking about! I am not waiting for Alex!
Ruby: Yes you are, my dear friend. He must be some man because nobody can ever measure up to him. And I know that's what you do every time you meet someone: compare. I'm sure he's a fabulous friend and I'm sure he always says sweet and wonderful thing to you. But he's not here. He's thousands of miles away, working as a doctor in a great big hospital and he lives in a fancy apartment with his fancy doctor fiancee. I don't think he's thinking of leaving that life anytime soon to come back to a single mother who's living in a tiny flat working in a crappy part-time job in a paperclip factory with a crazy friend who emails her every second. So stop waiting and move on. Live your life. — Cecelia Ahern

A mother's job ... is very much to hold back the coming of manhood. — Michael Gurian

You said electronic lock. I didn't know it was a TL-30X6." "I don't like your tone, Merlin. You sound very pessimistic. Maybe even defeatist." "Heller, listen to me. I brought my StrongArm safe cracker diamond-core drill bits, okay? But drilling through one of these, that's a five-hour job at least. That mother's made from inch-and-a-half-thick steel and cobalt-carbide matrix hardplate, okay?" "If you say so. — Joseph Finder

This time of year is brutal. Joe knows exactly what Donny's referring to. It's January, just after the holiday season, a time for family and gift giving and celebration for most, a time of unbearable depression for others. The days are cold and dark by four thirty. Joe and Donny have responded to a lot of suicides over the years, and winter is sadly the most popular season. Joe won't miss that part of his job. Discovering the bodies. Sometimes the body parts. A teenager overdoses on heroin. A mother swallows a bottle of prescription pills. A father leaps off the Tobin. A cop eats his gun. — Lisa Genova

We just kept moving back and forth because my mother never had a job. We kept getting kicked out of every house we were in. I believe six months was the longest we ever lived in a house. — Eminem

Sweet mother of God. I was kidding about you crushing on her, but I'm right. Oh my God, you are totally jealous of her bodyguard! Oh this is priceless!" Gwen starts laughing.
"This is a job, nothing else. Just like Mrs. Henderson last week was a job. I don't mix business with pleasure. Ever," I tell her firmly.
"Mrs. Henderson is ninety-two years old and thought her dog was stealing food out of her fridge. I would hope to God you would never mix that kind of business with pleasure. That's just gross," Gwen says with a grimace. — Tara Sivec

There is a reason people say being a mother is the hardest job in the world: You do not sleep and you do not get vacation time. You do not leave your work on your desk at the end of the day. Your briefcase is your heart, and you are rifling through it constantly. Your office is as wide as the world, and your punch card is measured not in hours but in a lifetime. — Jodi Picoult

Who are the happiest people on earth? A craftsman or artist whistling over a job well done. A little child building sand castles. A mother, after a busy day, bathing her baby. A doctor who has finished a difficult and dangerous operation, and saved a human life. Happiness lies in a constructive job well done. Get your happiness out of your work or you will never know what happiness is. — Elbert Hubbard

To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months' summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect. My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning. — Bel Kaufman

My mother gave up everything for me. In Yekaterinburg, she had a job and an apartment in the centre of the city and her whole life. And in Moscow - nothing. — Julia Lipnitskaya

My solo three-month hike on the Pacific Crest Trail had many beginnings. There was the first, flip decision to do it, followed by the second, more serious decision to actually do it, and then the long third beginning, composed of weeks of shopping and packing and preparing to do it. There was the quitting my job as a waitress and finalizing my divorce and selling almost everything I owned and saying goodbye to my friends and visiting my mother's grave one last time. — Cheryl Strayed

My sister Jennifer is an Emmy winning journalist and mother of three amazing girls. She brings an exceptional dedication to her job, her family, and her community, and has been a role model of mine for many, many years. I'm extremely proud of her. — Ron Livingston

At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept. But in England she had to wash piles and piles of nappies, wheel the child round for sunshine during the day, attend to his feeds as regularly as if one were serving a master, talk to the child, even if he was only a day old! Oh, yes, in England, looking after babies was in itself a full-time job. — Buchi Emecheta

I'm a good girl. I'm a nice girl. I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and brother's shit and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died,after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father ever day on the telephone
every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a big muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "Such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL. — Claire Messud

My father, who was from a wealthy family and highly educated, a lawyer, Yale and Columbia, walked out with the benefit of a healthy push from my mother, a seventh grade graduate, who took a typing course and got a secretarial job as fast as she could. — George Weinberg

Give a child a good birth (if at all possible, no drugs to the mother)=1
and a good first three years, especially a good first three months, and a major part of the job of child rearing is done. — Arthur Janov

That waitress was flirting with me," Dad announced once we were out of the restaurant. He said it in his "whispering voice," which meant it was still loud enough for the waitress, all of her coworkers, and the shoppers at every other store in the mall to overhear.
"Ew," I said. "She was not."
Dad chuckled with delight over how hot and eligible he imagined himself to be. "She kept coming over to 'try to collect my plate' ... "
"Because that is her job," I reminded him.
"And the way she looked at your mother? Pure jealousy!" Dad slipped his arm around Mom's waist. "Poor thing. I left her a big tip. — Leila Sales

Adora changed her color scheme from peach to yellow. She promised me she'd take me to the fabric store so I can make new coverings to match. This dollhouse is my fancy." She almost made it sound natural, my fancy. The words floated out of her mouth sweet and round like butterscotch, murmured with just a tilt of her head, but the phrase was definitely my mother's. Her little doll, learning to speak just like Adora.
"Looks like you do a very good job with it," I said, and motioned a weak wave good-bye.
"Thank you," she said. Her eyes focused on my room in the dollhouse. A small finger poked the bed. "I hope you enjoy your stay here," she murmured into the room, as if she were addressing a tiny Camille no one could see. — Gillian Flynn

I didn't know shorthand either. This meant I couldn't get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand would be something else again. Everybody would want her. She would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. — Sylvia Plath

Madlen came to sit beside her on the bed. "Lady Queen," she said with her own particular brand of rough gentleness. "It is not the job of the child to protect her mother. It's the mother's job to protect the child. By allowing your mother to protect you, you gave her a gift. Do you understand me? — Kristin Cashore

Ladies, [motherhood] is a full-time job. Do not kid yourself that you can be a dental receptionist and a mother; that you can be a typist and a mom; that you can be a Vice President and a mom. One of the two things will win. Now look at your Bible and ask what you have to do. — Alistair Begg

It was only after five years in the army, when I was having to do a very boring job in a very boring place, that I thought: 'Why not try writing a novel?' partly out of youthful arrogance and partly because there had been a long line of writers in my mother's family. — Antony Beevor

My letters seeking a job, though truthful, diminished the full truth. Face would blanch if the facts had been complete: "Dear Sir," I thought. "Do you have a position for a journeyman burglar, con man, forger and car thief; also with experience as armed robber, pimp, card cheat and several other things. I smoked marijuana at twelve (in the 40's) and shot heroin at sixteen. I have no experience with LSD and methedrine. They came to popularity since my imprisonment. I've buggered pretty young boys and feminine homosexuals (but only when locked up away from women). In the idiom of jails, prisons and gutters (some plush gutters) I'm a motherfucker! Not literally, for I don't remember my mother. In my world the term, used as I used it, is a boast of being hell on wheels, outrageously unpredictable, a virtuoso of crime. Of course by being a motherfucker in that world I'm a piece of garbage in yours. Do you have a job? — Edward Bunker

It's only too easy to idealise a mother's job. We know well that every job has its frustrations and its boring routines and its times of being the last thing anyone would choose to do. Well, why shouldn't the care of babies and children be thought of that way too? — Donald Woods Winnicott

I'm a mother, I'm a journalist, I'm an American; I'm all of those things, and it really complicates your job when you have all these things come into play. — Paula Zahn

I began reading Harper Lee's novel in the skimpy shade of a pine outside my grandmother's house, fat beagles pressing against me, begging for attention, ignored. At dark, I kept reading, first on the couch, a bologna sandwich in one hand, then in my bed, by the light of a 60-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling on an orange drop cord. When my mother came in from her job as a maid and unplugged my chandelier, I replayed the story in my head until it was crowded out by dreams. I woke the next morning, smelling biscuits, and reached for the book again. — Rick Bragg

You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of a family. Just do your job right and your kids will love you. — Ethel Waters

It is a terrible thing to feel sorry for one's mother or indeed father. And it's an additionally awful thing to feel this and to know the impotence of the adolescent to do anything at all about it. Worse still, perhaps, is the selfish consolation that it isn't really one's job to rear one's parents. — Christopher Hitchens

So for me the creative world isn't what you do after your day job, though many professional musicians do this to make ends meet, but it's something that IS a job. Perhaps that's why I'm not as disheartened by the more cold blooded aspects of the industry. Over the course of watching my mother navigate the creative world I've seen just about every trick pulled that could have been and I've seen her deposit the checks received for a job well done. When I recently asked her why she chose the creative world she said: "Early on I decided that if I had to work I was going to work at something that I loved."

I'm glad she did. As difficult, chaotic, dysfunctional and crazy as the world in music and the arts can be I always knew that they mattered deeply to her, as they do to me. — Jamie Freveletti

Sulien held up the broken spear, one piece in each hand. "A warhammer did this?"
"You saw that hammer the Lightning almost hit Addolgar with. And that's not even the one he uses during battles. That one is bloody huge. Nearly as
big as the bastard's head."
Her father chuckled and stepped around her. "The only purpose of this spear was to protect you - and it did. Its job is now done." He started to
throw the pieces into a bin he kept for trash.
"Don't you dare throw that out."
"Why not? It's broken, and repairing it would be useless. It'l only break again."
"But you made it for me."
"You cling to what is meaningless, child. Just like your mother sometimes, only with her it's mostly grudges. — G.A. Aiken

Society tried to teach me that children are by nature selfish, out-of-control, and demanding, that their goal is power and that they are always trying to see how much they can get away with, that you can't let children manipulate you or become too dependant, and that disobedience equals disrespect. As a mother, I have come to believe strongly that my child's primary goals are having his needs met, feeling connected to others, and feeling self-worth. His misbehavior is an attempt to get a need met or to feel significance and connection, done in an appropriate way ... my job as a parent is to help my child identify and meet those needs in appropriate ways. - Lisa S. — Hilary Flower

Dancing in speakeasies was a job, and none of us knew for sure who were gangsters. No one told us, so how could we know? My mother used to come and take me home. We thought nothing of walking home together at two in the morning. — Ruby Keeler

It's much more work for the mother of an autistic child to have a job, because working with an autistic child is such a hassle until they go to school. — Temple Grandin

I always told my mother I wanted a job where I could have a lot of fun and have a lot of time off. She asked me where I was going to find that, and I said, 'I don't know, but it's out there.' — Sherman Hemsley

I would've given up without her - not on you, never on you, but on myself. I suppose I can tell you this now, but I wasn't a very good student. I wasn't smart enough to just get by. I wasn't focused enough in class. I rarely passed exams. I skipped assignments. I was constantly on academic probation. Not that your grandmother would ever know, but at the time, I was thinking of doing what you were later accused of doing: selling all my belongings, sticking out my thumb, and hitchhiking to California to be with the other hippies who had dropped out and tuned in.

Everything changed when I met your mother. She made me want things that I had never dreamed of wanting: a steady job, a reliable car, a mortgage, a family. You figured out a long time ago that you got your wanderlust from me. I want you to know that this is what happens when you meet the person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with: That restless feeling dissolves like butter. — Karin Slaughter

My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack. — Elizabeth Warren

Maybe this was the job of a mother: to buy time for her child, no matter what. Even if it meant doing something she'd rather not; even if it left her flat on her back. — Jodi Picoult

I've always valued the input of the people I love. So in the past, whenever I'd make a decision - what to wear to an event, whether to pursue a job opportunity - I'd consult those closest to me, like my mother, husband, or manager. — Alicia Keys

My mother did an incredible job - one, of just being a great mom, but two, of instilling a tremendous amount of empathy into me as a young man, as a young person. My mom was kind of this collector of people; throughout my childhood, it didn't matter who you were. She was a high school counselor and then a junior high counselor, and she didn't just counsel students, she counseled other teachers and administrators and coaches. — Morgan Spurlock

Those of us raised in modern cities tend to notice horizontal and vertical lines more quickly than lines at other orientations. In contrast, people raised in nomadic tribes do a better job noticing lines skewed at intermediate angles, since Mother Nature tends to work with a wider array of lines than most architects. — Sam Kean

Both of my parents are music teachers. My mother owns the school that I taught in. My brothers and sisters are musicans. My mom pushed me all the time. She knew that I could do it. She knew more than I did. She thought I would go somewhere. She gave me the job and helped me get equipment, which a lot of parents don't do. Alot of my students had to go out and fight for it. — Randy Rhoads

The mother must teach her son how to respect and follow the rules. She must teach him how to compete successfully with the other boys. And she must teach him how to find a woman to take care of him and finish the job she began of training him how to live in a family. But no matter how good a job a woman does in teaching a boy how to be a man, he knows that she is not the real thing, and so he tends to exaggerate the differences between men and women that she embodies. — Frank Pittman

She was working on the eighth step of her program and was here in Haverhill to make amends. For years she had not wanted Linda to know Wayne, to be a part of his life. She took pleasure in limiting her mother's contact with the boy, felt it was her job to protect Wayne from Linda. She wished now there had been someone to protect Wayne from herself. She had amends to make to him, too. — Joe Hill

My mother and father come from that post-Depression, middle-of-World-War -I kind of thinking that says, 'Find a practical job. You know what I mean, Mr. Big Shot? So, you can sing a song ... ' — Al Jarreau

People would ask, "Why don't you put her in a nursing home?" I always answered, "I feel it is my responsibility, because she's my wife and Heather's mother. I love her and it's my job to take care of her for as long as I physically and mentally can."
Every day, I would rush home at lunch, prepare her something to eat and drive her around a little, too. She loved to ride in the car and that seemed to keep her smiling. By late October, she had really gone down. We were playing Ole Miss in Oxford, in a game that is probably best remembered for David Palmer replacing an injured Jay Barker and putting on a show that had Heisman voters buzzing.
Sadly, what I remember most was getting off the team plane and calling home. Charlotte didn't answer and I began to panic and started calling some of our neighbors. I finally reached one of the neighbors and she went to the house and found Charlotte just staring ahead. I don't think Charlotte ever answered the phone again. — Mal Moore With Steve Townsend

I wanted a boyfriend who was a Christian but who wasn't uptight about it, who was good-looking and intelligent and had an interesting job and a sense of humor, who said "fuck" when the situation warranted it, who had attempted to but been unable to finish St. Augustine's City of God, who could argue politics with my mother and talk business with my father, who liked Indian food and had nice friends and knew how to dress and would like someday to live abroad. — Sarah Dunn

Brendan Harris loved everyone now because he loved Katie and Katie loved him. Brendan loved traffic and smog and the sound of jackhammers. He loved his worthless old man who hadn't sent him a single birthday or Christmas card since he'd walked out on Brendan and his mother when Brendan was six. He loved Monday mornings, sitcoms that couldn't make a retard laugh, and standing in line at the RMV. He even loved his job, though he wouldn't be going in ever again. — Dennis Lehane

Ya Ummi(my mother), I cannot live my life with a woman who has no key to my mind and does not share my concerns. She cannot - will not - read anything. She shrugs off the grave problems of the day and asks if I think her new tablecloth is pretty. We are living in difficult times and it is not enough for a person to be interested in his home and his job - in his own personal life. I need my partner to be someone to whom I can turn, confident of her sympathy, believing her when she tells me I'm in the wrong, strengthened when she tells me I'm in the right. I want to love, and be loved back - but what I see is not love or companionship but a sort of transacton of convenience santioned by religion and society and I do not want it. — Ahdaf Soueif

When I came out of the wagon, he had her in a dramatic dip and was giving her a kiss. I set the needle and thread next to my shirt and waited. It seemed like a good kiss. I watched with a calculating eye, dimly aware that at some point in the future I might want to kiss a lady. If i did, I wanted to do a decent job of it.
After a moment my father noticed me and stood my mother back on her feet."That will be ha'penny for the show, Master Voyeur,"he laughed. "What are you still here for, boy? I'll bet you the same ha'penny that a question slowed you down. — Patrick Rothfuss

Maybe the job of a mother is not to shelter but to bear witness as a child hits full force . . . and then to cushion the fall when it's over. Mariah's — Jodi Picoult

I mean that a battered child has a marvelous capacity to adjust to his torture and will ceaselessly love his battering parents. I mean that the mother of a sexually molested child will not leave nor truly protect the child from the father as long as the man has a good job or otherwise preserves that mother from an economic life which is more horrifying to her than the molestation of her child. I mean that the weakness of the human race is stupefying and that it's not the capacity for evil which astounds young policemen like you and me, Dean. Rather it's the mind boggling worthlessness of human beings. There's not enough dignity in mankind for evil and that's the most terrifying thing a policeman learns. — Joseph Wambaugh

My father had a healthy disregard for social conventions: he once let me paint the house windows in rainbows with my watercolor set, to my mother's horror, and he'd clap for trees that he thought were doing a good job of exploding into red during the fall. — Jennifer DuBois