Love Like A Mother Quotes & Sayings

You are her mother.
Why did you not warn her,
hold her like a rotting boat
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island
if her thighs are borders?

What man wants to lie down
and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?

Your daughter 's face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things.

But God,
doesn't she wear
the world well? — Warsan Shire

That night, when the creature sleeps, when he sleeps, the mother escapes into her daughters' room. She tells her daughter that the creature's afraid of her having too much love, too much heart. She takes a tube of lipstick and drags it across her finger like a knife, marking it across her daughter's cheeks, red, blood, war paint. — Elijah Noble El

She was willing to give you everything she had. And you took it from her. You took her youth, and her beauty, and her energy and her health-" For a moment, think of his mother, Gabe couldn't continue speaking. He fell silent and choked back tears. Then he took a deep breath and went on, "- and it didn't matter. We found each other. None of it mattered but that. You won't ever know what that's like, to love someone. In a way, I pity you. But I hope you starve. — Lois Lowry

I believe God loves the world through us - through you and through me. We use Mother Teresa's name; it is only a name, but we are real co-workers and carriers of His love. Today God loves the world through us. Especially in times like these when people are trying to make God "was," it is you and I, by our love, by the purity of our lives, by our compassion, who prove to the world that God "is." — Mother Teresa

Our primitive ancestors learnt various behavioral characteristics like jealousy, possessiveness and aggression to ensure the survival of their wild love life in the harsh environment of Mother Nature. And all those behavioral responses eventually got engraved in our genetic blueprint. So, these are not the enemies in the path of a healthy relationship, rather when utilized properly they can even kindle the spark in a dying relationship. — Abhijit Naskar

Simply holding on to that tangible link between mother and daughter. A bond like no other. Irreplaceable. Unwavering. Old as time itself. There truly was nothing like the love of a mother. Unconditional. Solid. Indefinable and limitless. Capable of surviving anything. Able to triumph over the impossible. — Maya Banks

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

And, like a lightning strike, there is his example. His mother before him. The lesson that she passed down for him to pass on to his children - the courage to face every breath with love and gratitude. — Lisa Genova

You must have been the best mother in the world.
Have prayed seventeen times a day ... just for me.
Been the strongest woman on earth.
Had a direct connection to God.
Have been hand-picked to parent a daughter like me.
Know how much I miss you everyday.
Not a day goes by that I don't think of you.
You are woven into every thought, dream and ambition I possess ...
Happy Mother's Day, mom.
I miss you and love you ... — Paula Heller Garland

Quang Trung explained to Hoa that he called his band Love Like Hate because that was how he felt about Vietnam. "I love Vietnam so much I hate her. How can I not hate her when I love her so much? I am like a son who froths at the mouth because he has to watch his mother sell her pussy. She's sold her pussy to the Chinese, French, Russians and Americans, and now she's selling it to the Taiwanese. She'd sell her pussy to anyone because she feels inferior to everyone. She's thrilled to be humiliated because someone is paying attention to her. And when she's too old to sell her own pussy, she sells her daughter's pussy. That's Mother Vietnam for you! — Linh Dinh

There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. — John Gregory Brown

Do you love me?"
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!"
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
"Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. You could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,'" his mother said.
"Or," his father suggested, "'Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes.'"
"Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents. — Lois Lowry

Unless you are here: this garden refuses to exist.
Pink dragonflies fall from the air
and become scorpions scratching blood out of rocks.
The rainbows that dangle upon this mist: shatter.
Like the smile of a child separated
from his mother's milk for the very first time.
from poem Blood and Blossoms — Aberjhani

You can stay home," V muttered. "You really can totally f-in' stay the f home, you f'ed-up mother-f'ing f-twit."
Lassiter clasped his breastplate, and swooned like Julie Andrews. "Don't you love it when he can't swear? Warms my cockles - it's like watching a drunk on roller skates try to play dodgeball in the dark - — J.R. Ward

But that was long ago. She has long since lost interest in motives, in the details of other women's crimes. Even the hatchet makes its usual sense. A mother who loves her child with all her self is only so far from the hatchet anyway; one casual swing and it's done. Hatred, love, all muddled up in that space inside a whisper, when the words don't matter anymore, when the baby's half asleep and you can carry it all the way there if you want, on nothing but the tone of your voice. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. Sing it as softly as you like - the words clench their own teeth. The child still falls. — Emily Ruskovich

But against sandfly fever one could be inoculated, and I have another, hideously vivid picture of a great menacing brute of a doctor sticking a Thing that ended in a vicious needle into my mother's arm. Mad to defend my own, I scrambled off my father's knee, and flew to her rescue. I fixed my teeth in the doctor's horrible hairy wrist and hung on like a terrier, until my father succeeded in prising me away. Afterwards, everybody said how wonderful the doctor had been, because he continued calmly giving the inoculation while I was prised off him, instead of breaking the needle in my mother's arm. But nobody said how brave it was of me, only three years old, when all is said and done, and gone in the legs at that, to take on such fearful odds for the sake of love. — Rosemary Sutcliff

It pleased him to imagine God as someone like his mother, someone beleagured by too many responsibilities, too dog-tired to monitor an energetic boy every minute of the day, but who, out of love and fear for his safety, checked in on him whenever she could. Was this so crazy? ... Miles liked the idea of a God who, when He at last had the oppotunity to return His attention to His children, might shake His head with wonder and mutter, "Jesus. Look what they're up to now." A distractible God, perhaps, one who'd be startled to discover so many of His children way up in trees since the last time He looked. A God whose hand would go rushing to His mouth in fear in that instant of recognition that - good God! - that kid's going to hurt himself. A God who could be surprised by unanticipated pride - glory be, that boy is a climber! — Richard Russo

Most of the kids that I meet in the street are serious hardened criminals that I meet in the street, never had a mother and a father to love them, to protect them, to teach them right from wrong and lead them out of crime and gangs and stuff like that. — Steven Seagal

When they were both five, Charlie and David asked their mother where babies come from. Charlie's mom folded herself into an armchair, sat Charlie on her lap, and pointed to pictures in what Charlie had always thought was a book of sea creatures. She helped him sounds out the scientific names. David's mother had a more whimsical answer. "When two people make love, a little blue fair leaps from the daddy to the mummy, connecting them like a ribbon of light. And sometimes, the fairy leaves a baby in the mummy's tummy." Would the fairies leave any more babies in his mummy's tummy? David wanted to know. "No, Davie." Why not? "Because Daddy's fairies are lazy. — John M. Cusick

I am not going to apologize for the idyllic childhood and the wonderful siblings and the Christian home I grew up in. I know how blessed I am and I am thankful, but I also know it's not that way for everyone. I was talking to a young woman recently who was going through her something and she said, "I don't have sisters to watch my back like you do. I didn't have the kind of mother you did." And I said to her what I've begun saying to people across the country, "Then why not let the legacy of love and support start with you? — Robin Roberts

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

Pop, why didn't you ever marry again?"
"I was a good husband to your mother," Pop said. "I would not be a good husband to another woman. It would not be fair, because I gave everything I had to my first marriage. Love is like that for some people. — Susan Wiggs

Even his highly emotional Italian mother didn't believe that true love could blossom overnight. Like his brothers and sisters-in-law, she wanted nothing more for him than to marry and start a family, but if he showed up at her doorstep and said that he'd met someone two days ago and knew she was the one for him, his mother would smack him with a broom, curse in Italian, and drag him to church, sure that he had some serious sins that needed confessing. — Nicholas Sparks

The sense that in his mother's view, he had let down his family just by being who he was ... was a failure of acceptance that he was never going to get over. He just wanted to live, honestly and out front, with no apology. Like everyone else. To love who he loved, be who he was ... but society had a different standard. — J.R. Ward

God's treasury where He keeps His children's gifts will be like many a mother's store of relics of her children, full of things of no value to others, but precious in His eyes for the love's sake that was in them. — Francois Fenelon

All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight. — John Steinbeck

LIKE MOTHER, LIKE LOVER

There is the mother
Who cooks too much
To feed her children,
And there is the mother
Who cooks too little,
Or not at all.

There is the bird
That returns to its nest
With just a frail worm
And feeds it to her babies,
And there is the bird
That kills its frail babies
Just to eat the worm.

There is the lover
Who argues that
There is never
Enough love,
And there is the other lover
Who argues that love is
All there ever
Was. — Suzy Kassem

As a child, my own mother told me the human heart spun on an axis smaller than a dime. Like her father, she sold "life for love" insurance. For the price of ten years off your life, you could purchase insurance on a ten-year love affair. Plans were also available in increments of twenty-five and fifty. If your love affair failed before your insurance expired, they'd provide you with a clone of the loved one for the duration of the term. Sometimes the clone worked out even better than the original. — Miranda Mellis

Mom! Look. This one is my favorite," Devin said, pulling out a faded pink dress with a red plaid sash. The crinoline petticoat underneath was so old and stiff it made snapping sounds, like beads or fire embers. She dropped the dress over her head, over her clothes. It brushed the floor. "When I'm old enough for it to fit me, I'm going to wear it with purple shoes," she said.
"A bold choice," Kate said as Devin dove back into the trunk. The attic in Kate's mother's house had always fascinated Devin with its promise of hidden treasures. When Kate's mother had been alive, she had let Devin eat Baby Ruth candy bars and drink grape soda and play in this old trunk full of dresses that generations of Morris women had worn to try entice rich men to marry them. Most of the clothes had belonged to Kate's grandmother Marilee, a renowned beauty who, like all the rest, had fallen in love with a poor man instead. — Sarah Addison Allen

I got most of my confidence by having a mother who never said "I don't like this or this." It was just, "You've got to love what you have because it is the only body that has been given." I know that is where a lot of my confidence came from. — Ashley Graham

Women often forget that the man she is complaining about is a creation of a mother like her. — Debasish Mridha

My mother and father were married this way and are quite happy. I hope to find happiness, too. To find a woman that all of Illea can love, someone to be my companion and to help entertain the leaders of other nations. Someone who will befriend my friends and be my confidante. I'm ready to find my wife.
Something in his voice struck me. There wasn't a trace of sarcasm. This thing that seemed like little more than a game show to me was his only chance for happiness. He couldn't try with a second round of girls. Well, maybe he could, but how embarrassing. He was so desperate, so hopeful. I felt my distaste for him lessen. Marginally. — Kiera Cass

Over time, we would learn each other and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots. — Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I do not diminish his love for me,' Imogen said. 'I would never do that. I know precisely how much he loved me: as much as he was capable of loving any woman, probably. He loved me somewhat ... after his stables, perhaps more than his mother.'
'Oh, Imogen,' Annabel said. 'Why dwell on such a-'
'Grief is like that!' Imogen snapped. 'You can only fool yourself so far. — Eloisa James

Niepokalanow is a home like Nazareth. The Father is God the Father, the mother and mistress of the home is the Immaculata, the firstborn son and our brother is Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the altar. All the younger brothers try to imitate the elder Brother in love and honor towards God and the Immaculata, our common parents, and from the Immaculata they try to love the divine elder Brother, the ideal of sanctity who deigned to come down from heaven to be incarnated in her and to live with us in the tabernacle ... — Maximilian Kolbe

Like infants with their mothers, we're helpless before the God who feeds us, cares for us and embraces us with even greater devotion than that of a loving mother with nursing babies." Does a nursing babe have to "be good" to earn that love-to deserve that tender, intimate feeding? No. He has only to open his mouth and be fed.
And so with us.
My — Rachel Marie Stone

A mother's love is like a fortress, And we seek protection there, When the waves of tribulation, Seem to drown us in despair. — Helen Steiner Rice

So I'm smoking in the house, Mother said. And Bobbie's got a dog in her room. And your son Will's got an Injun in his. So there it is, Mother said. Like it or lump it! — Tom Spanbauer

I still love you," he says, "but I have to go my own way." "So you want to break up?" I ask, trembling. "I guess so," he says. I fall to the floor, like a woman in the twelfth century fainting at the sight of a hanging in her town square. Later, my mother comes home from a party and finds me catatonic, lying across the bed, surrounded by pictures of him and me, the mittens he bought me at Christmas folded beneath my cheek. I am crippled by what feels like sadness but what I will later diagnose as embarrassment. She tells me this is a great excuse: to take time for myself, to cry a bunch, to eat only carbohydrates slathered in cheese. "You will find," she says, "that there's a certain grace to having your heart broken." I will use this line many times in the years to come, giving it as a gift to anyone who needs it. — Lena Dunham

A mother's love is like a tower, Rising far above the crowd, And her smile is like the sunshine, Breaking through a threatening cloud. — Helen Steiner Rice

When the late Lord Northcliffe found a newspaper using a picture of him which he didn't want published, he wrote the editor a letter. But did he say, 'Please do not publish that picture of me any more; I don't like it'? No, he appealed to a nobler motive. He appealed to the respect and love that all of us have for motherhood. He wrote, 'Please do not publish that picture of me any more. My mother doesn't like it. — Dale Carnegie

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

My mother clutches at the collar of my shirt. I rub her back and feel her tears on my neck. It's been decades since our bodies have been this close. It's an odd sensation, like a torn ligament knitting itself back, lumpy and imperfect, usable as long as we know not to push it too hard. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too. — Albert Camus

What are people searching for in life? God. In the christian scriptures, it says 'Be still and know you are God.' What is this? You are peace, compassion, truth, Love, freedom. Real love- the ability to love yourself so much that you forgive everything and you are at peace with yourself like a mother loves a child, not trying to be someone. — Ajahn Brahm

I was trying to understand my grandmother feelings. Why, when I looked at and held the baby, I felt I was floating, that I was on a high.... I keep wanting to burst into song!
So I wasn't crazy, & I wasn't alone. When a grandmother holds the baby, her brain, like a new mother's, can also be drenched in the bonding hormone oxytocin.
Aha! There it was. We grandmas literally, actually fall in love. — Lesley Stahl

THERE ARE FEW THINGS as beautiful as a glass bottle filled with deep amber whiskey. Liquor shines when the light hits it, reminiscent of precious things like jewels and gold. But whiskey is better than some lifeless bracelet or coronet. Whiskey is a living thing capable of any emotion that you are. It's love and deep laughter and brotherhood of the type that bonds nations together. Whiskey is your friend when nobody else comes around. And whiskey is solace that holds you tighter than most lovers can. I thought all that while looking at my sealed bottle. And I knew for a fact that it was all true. True the way a lover's pillow talk is true. True the way a mother's dreams for her napping infant are true. But the whiskey mind couldn't think its way out of the problems I had. So I took Mr. Seagram's, put him in his box, and placed him up on the shelf where he belonged. — Walter Mosley

Do you regret it, amira?"
"Regret . . . what?"
"Meeting me. Knowing me." He searched my face. "Loving me."
Everything seemed to stop at the word; it hung in the air between us, tangible and real. "No," I said at last. "No."
"But you fear you will someday. That's why you hold back. That's why you want to know you can change things before you commit." He let go of my hand and stood. The distance between us ached like the cold of a winter sea. "You watched your father chase your mother for years, and you wished he didn't love her. What will you do to my memory when I'm gone? Will you chase it like a dragon? Or will you banish it like smoke? — Heidi Heilig

I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband - I see the treacherous seducer of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid - I see these sights on the earth; 5
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny - I see martyrs and prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea - I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these - All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent. — Walt Whitman

One day is not enough to watch a tree, one life is not enough to love a tree.
I wonder when i see a new leaf, it was like a new born baby come and meet the world; I feel great to see a plant bearing fruits, it was like a mother carrying her child during her pregnancy period — Karthikeyan V

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

Mother I had a beautiful house in Shingdi a vegetable garden Vines of bitter gourd lettuce English spinach and tousled coconut trees Coconuts fell on my darling husbands head One day we made love under the tree Now I was pregnant just like my orchard full of fruits with the love child Oh I ran as hard as I could from the shadow These were shadows of time shadows of the past ... — Mehreen Ahmed

Cold men destroy women," my mother wrote me years later. "They woo them with something personable that they bring out for show, something annexed to their souls like a fake greenhouse, lead you in, and you think you see life and vitality and sun and greenness, and then when you love them, they lead you out into their real soul, a drafty, cavernous, empty ballroom, inexorably arched and vaulted and mocking you with its echoes - you hear all you have sacrificed, all you have given, landing with a loud clunk. They lock the greenhouse and you are as tiny as a figure in an architect's drawing, a faceless splotch, a blur of stick limbs abandoned in some voluminous desert of stone. — Lorrie Moore

It could not have been easy for Mother, an only child, to grow up without a father and with a mother who was remote. Photos of her as a child show her extremely dressed up
Cornie's beautiful little doll. But a daughter, unlike a doll, grows up, and might fall in love with and marry someone her mother does not like; she becomes an individual with her own ideas. — Cornelia Maude Spelman

Garraty wondered how it would be, to lie in the biggest, dustiest library silence of all, dreaming endless, thoughtless dreams behind your gummed-down eyelids, dressed forever in your Sunday suit. No worries about money, success, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, sex, or love. Absolute zero. No father, mother, girlfriend, lover. The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death.
How would that be? Just how would that be? — Stephen King

That love - whose obedience is wide and long and high and deep enough to dissolve a mountain of rightful wrath - is the love you've been looking for all your life. No family love, no friend love, no mother love, no spousal love, no romantic love - nothing could possibly satisfy you like that. All those other kinds of loves will let you down; this one never will. — Timothy J. Keller

She slipped Glenn into her bed and then her face hung over Glenn's for one quiet moment, like a moon.
"Meera doe branagh, Glennora Morgan."
The strange words drifted down from her mother's lips, whispered as light as falling snow.
"What does it mean, Mommy?"
Fingertips grazed Glenn's cheek. "It means I love you. It means I'll always love you." She kissed Glenn softly on the forehead, then backed away. "No matter what."
She stepped into the bright hallway and closed the door.
When Glenn woke the next morning, her mother was gone — Jeff Hirsch

She is a woman who deserves some respect. She's the one who'll bear the belligerent burden of birthing your kids. She's a woman, not an ass, or a breast or something else that could be sexually caressed. Appreciate the woman that she is because she and your mother are one in the same. She will be a wife someday; should't she get treated like more of a gain? — Jasmine Sandozz

Adieu," he said, "this is goodbye. I'll never forget you, never."
She stood silent. He looked at her and saw her eyes full of tears. He turned away.
At this moment she wasn't ashamed of loving him, because her physical desire had gone and all she felt towards him now was pity and a profound, almost maternal tenderness. She forced herself to smile. "Like the Chinese mother who sent her son off to war telling him to be careful 'because war has its dangers,' I'm asking you, if you have any feelings for me, to be as careful as possible with your life."
Because it is precious to you?" he asked nervously.
Yes. Because it is precious to me. — Irene Nemirovsky

There is no other love like a mother's love for her child, — Celine Dion

I will respect you like you were my sister or my mother but inspire and love you like
you were a queen. — The Prolific Penman

This life is difficult. We lose fathers, brothers, mothers, songbirds and pieces of ourselves. Whips strike the innocent, honors go to the guilty, and there is too much loneliness. I would be a fool to pray for my children to escape all of that. Ask for too much and it might actually turn out worse. But I can pray for small things, like fertile fields, a mother's love, a child's smile - a life that's less bitter than sweet. — Nadia Hashimi

I love this child. Red-haired - patient and gentle like her mother - fey and funny like her father. When she giggles I can hear him when he and I were young. I am part of this child. It may be only because we share genes and that therefore smell familiar to each other ... It may be that a part of me lives in her in some important way ... But for now, it's jelly beans and 'Old MacDonald' that unite us. — Robert Fulghum

I love a lot of these older actresses, like Cicely Tyson, who played Kunta Kinte's mother in 'Roots.' She was really great, and I like seeing her because every movie she plays, she plays a strong character. As a kid, she was really inspiring to me. — Keke Palmer

No language can express the power, and beauty, and heroism, and majesty of a mother's love. It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over wastes of worldly fortunes sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I love to sing with my daughter. Audiences like it because a mother-daughter pairing is a curiosity. — Montserrat Caballe

Sam loved me in a way that was as close as love could come to his mother's indifference. It was playful, bouncy, it accepted the situation between us without annotations, and without realizing it, he stuck me like a buffer between himself and his parents. He had a wife, and that warded them off. How could he be wild if he was settled? How could he be in trouble if he was married? He might have known these things, but coming from that emotionally monosyllabic household, how could he have had a vocabulary for them? — Laurie Colwin

No, we don't accomplish our love in a single year as the flowers do; an immemorial sap flows up through our arms when we love. Dear girl, this: that we loved, inside us, not One who would someday appear, but seething multitudes; not just a single child, but also the fathers lying in our depths like fallen mountains; also the dried-up riverbeds of ancient mothers-;also the whole soundless landscape under the clouded or clear sky of its destiny -; all this, my dear, preceded you. — Rainer Maria Rilke

If I weren't performing, I'd be a beauty editor or a therapist. I love creativity, but I also love to help others. My mother was a hairstylist, and they listen to everyone's problems - like a beauty therapist! — Beyonce Knowles

You must give what will cost you something. This is giving not just what you can live without, but what you can't live without, or don't want to live without, something you really like. Then your gift becomes a sacrifice, which will have value before God. This giving until it hurts - this sacrifice - is what I call love in action. — Mother Teresa

It's like picking the place you're going to live for the next fifty years by using a wall map, a blindfold, and what you really, truly, deeply believe is your lucky dart.' Sullenly Judith said, 'I don't believe I have a lucky dart,' and her mother cast an unhappy smile her way and said, 'You will, though. — Tom McNeal

Suddenly I remembered something Daddy told me once when I was angry at my mother. "You know how Mom arranges orange slices on a plate for your soccer team and has activities planned for your birthday parties two months in advance?" he'd asked me. "That's the way she shows her love, Gracie." Why was I thinking about that now? I could hear his voice so clearly, like he was talking to me from the backseat of the car. That's the way she shows her love, Gracie. — Diane Chamberlain

GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws
riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public
knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong.
ROS: And talking to himself.
GUIL: And talking to himself. — Tom Stoppard

You didn't like him, did you, Dad?"
"It wasn't that I didn't like him," my dad says slowly. "It was just that he lives in a completely different world, and I worried that he didn't really approve of you the way you are, that he was trying to change you into something else."
God, I never realized my dad was that perceptive..
"You see, the thing is," he says after we've both sat for a while in the sunshine, "the thing is that love is really the most important thing. I know it's hard for you to see it now" - he chuckles quietly- "but when I first laid eyes on your mother I thought she was fantastic, and I've never stopped loving her, not for a second. Oh yes, we've had our rough patches, and she can be a bit of an old battle-ax at times, but I still love her. That in-love feeling at the beginning settles down into a different, familiar sort of love, but it has to be there right from the start, otherwise it just won't work. — Jane Green

There is no human love like a mother's love. There is no human tenderness like a mother's tenderness ... In all ages everywhere, the true children of a true mother 'rise up and call her blessed'; for they realize, sooner or later, that God gives no richer blessing to man than is found in a mother's love. — Henry Clay Trumbull

Death is like giving birth. Birth can be painful. Sometimes women die from giving birth. However, when the baby is born, all that pain (that was endured) vanishes in an instant. Love for that tiny baby makes one forget the pain, the fear. And as I've said before, love between mother and child is the highest experience, the closest to divine love.
You might wonder about the parallel I'm making between birth and death. But I say to you, the fear and pain accompanying an awful death is over quickly. Beyond that portal one is suddenly in the light, in oneness and bliss ... Just as a woman heals rapidly after childbirth and then is able to fall in love with her baby, those who pass over also are able to fall in love with a new life."-Kuan Yin (From "Oracle of Compassion: the Living Word of Kuan Yin — Hope Bradford

Don't make light of one of your better qualities. You love your people like a mother is supposed to love her children. You want what's best for them, even if that makes you uncomfortable, even if you don't like their choices. — Laurell K. Hamilton

A larceny and a missing. Me ears-ring missing and she larcen it. That gal just buss 'way like kite. She is a little duty gyal, that one. Never take no instruction from her mother. From she born, me say, this little one, this little one going turn slut like her auntie. Sometime me wonder if is fi her own or fi me. Anyway, she gone from Wednesday morning. Leave out before the sun even rise and is not the first time neither. But this time she take me ears-ring and me Julia of Paris shoes. Me no business bout the shoes. Imagine, she take off to go school from four in the morning? I mean to say, who love school so much that they leave four hour early? Me can smoke in here? — Marlon James

But in fact I was like Ossie, in this one regard: I was consumed by a helpless, often furious love for a ghost. Every rock on the island, every swaying tree branch or dirty dish in our house was like a word in a a sentence that I could read about my mother. All objects and events on our island, every single thing that you could see with your eyes, were like clues that I could use to reinvent her: would our mom love this thing, would she hate it? For a second I luxuriated in a real hatred of my brother. — Karen Russell

Who are we, as we stand before the child Jesus? Who are we, standing as we stand before today's children? Are we like Mary and Joseph, who welcomed Jesus and cared for him with the love of a father and a mother? Or are we like Herod, who wanted to eliminate him? Are we like the shepherds, who went in haste to kneel before him in worship and offer him their humble gifts? Or are we indifferent? — Pope Francis

There are no humans left. I should not be alone. I can't help but wonder that. There were so many of us living. But time started growing young four years ago. It isn't four years anymore. It's a number I wouldn't even be able to say. It feels like four years. It's trapped in my tender memory as four years. It's been an age. Multiple ages. It's been lifetimes; every single lifetime that used to exist. I remember my mother screaming. I recall the doctors naming me as nurses wiped away her blood and covered her face with white. The end of the play. It's been so long. Why am I alone? — F.K. Preston

I remember the last season I played. I went home after a ballgame one day, lay down on my bed, and tears came to my eyes. How can you explain that? It's like crying for your mother after she's gone. You cry because you love her. I cried, I guess, because I loved baseball, and I knew I had to leave it. — Willie Mays

Your mother stands against everything my parents believe in," I say. "But I'm not my parents."
"Aria," Hunter whispers into my ear.
"Yes?"
"Just kiss me."
We press our lips together gentle, and it's like I am alive, on fire, like I can do anything in the world. I know this because he's a mystic, but there's something more familiar, something safe and sexy and irresistible about the way his lips feel, his tongue brushing lightly against mine. Our passion is like what's described in my love letters: it's like coming home, finally, when I never even knew I'd been away. — Theo Lawrence

Your mother was a saint, if there ever was one. She's smiling on you today, you know that, right?" "I know." "Boy did she love you." "I wish I felt like I knew her," I said, like I always said. "Know yourself, and you'll know her," Dad said, another one of his famous sayings. "You're a lot like her. — Jennifer Handford

That fellow was like all of us: descended from good people who were stolen from their families and country, sailed over the sea, and forced into slavery. 'We don't let them steal our dignity,' that preacher said. Richard, his name was. He said they cannot steal our honor, our strength, or our love." "True words," I said. "Do you know what he said about this America?" Henry asked. I shook my head. "Remember, lads?" Henry asked his mates. "Join with me. He said, 'This land . . .'" A half dozen voices spoke with Henry, strong black men sharing the preacher's words like a hymn or a prayer. "'Which we have watered with our tears and our blood, is now our mother country.'" The words drifted up to the stars with the sparks from the fire. "We go to war, Missus Isabel," Henry added, "in order to make our mother country, this land, free for everyone. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Nadya Zelenin and her mother had returned from a performance of Eugene Onegin at the theatre. Going into her room, the girl swiftly threw off her dress and let her hair down. Then she quickly sat at the table in her petticoat and white bodice to write a letter like Tatyana's.
'I love you,' she wrote, 'but you don't love me, you don't love me!'
Having written this, she laughed.
She was only sixteen and had never loved anyone yet. She knew that Gorny (an army officer) and Gruzdyov (a student) were both in love with her, but now, after the opera, she wanted to doubt their love. To be unloved and miserable: what an attractive idea! There was something beautiful, touching and romantic about A loving B when B wasn't interested in A. Onegin was attractive in not loving at all, while Tatyana was enchanting because she loved greatly. Had they loved equally and been happy they might have seemed boring.
("After The Theatre") — Anton Chekhov

MY WISH I wish I could have a woman like you To be my better half The mother of my children I wish I could have a woman like you To be the organizer of my home and The selector of my costume I wish I could have a woman like you To love her And be loved by her I wish I could have a woman like you To love my children And be loved by me children I wish I could have a woman like you Whom, I can walk with in public places And feel proud — Ama Ata Aidoo

I love acting. But I love being a mother. To be a full mother and a full person, you have to do what you love, and that's acting. But I like the best of both worlds. — Tracey Gold

I'm not him - that guy who was your boyfriend. That guy you want.He almost said: I wish I could be. He had wished he could be. That was why he had come to the Academy, to learn how to be that guy they all wanted back. He'd wanted to be that way, be an awesome hero like in a game or a movie. He'd been so sure, at first, that was what he wanted. Except wishing he could be that guy was like wishing to obliterate the guy he was now: the normal, happy guy in a band, who could still love his mother, who did not wake up in the coldest, darkest hour of the night weeping for dead friends. And he did not know if he could be that guy she wanted, whether he wished it or not. — Cassandra Clare

What is a normal child like? Does he just eat and grow and smile sweetly? No, that is not what he is like. The normal child, if he has confidence in mother and father, pulls out all the stops. In the course of time, he tries out his power to disrupt, to destroy, to frighten, to wear down, to waste, to wangle, and to appropriate ... At the start he absolutely needs to live in a circle of love and strength (with consequent tolerance) if he is not to be too fearful of his own thoughts and of his imaginings to make progress in his emotional development. — D.W. Winnicott

There's just no love like the love of a mother for a child, no matter how that child comes into their life, and no loss or grief to match it. — Nora Roberts

Oh God, what do we do?"
"Do?" Levi said, looking oddly triumphant, like his plans for the night had finally materialized, Like he had been hoping for some disaster like this to happen so he didn't have to be bored anymore. Like even a dying girl in his bathtub was better than calling his mother to confirm that his grandfather actually was dead, and that what he had heard on the answering machine wasn't a mere auditory hallucination. "We save her, of course. — Matthew J. Hefti

She is the only one who knows
of the Coldness: a feeling that comes sometimes when I'm
lying in bed, a black, empty feeling that knocks my breath
away and leaves me gasping as though I've just been
thrown in icy water. On nights like that - although it is wrong
and illegal - I think of those strange and terrible words, I
love you, and wonder what they would taste like in my
mouth, try to recall their lilting rhythm on my mother's
tongue. — Lauren Oliver

I need the money, the security, because I might not have the blanket of support and love I have now forever. It could all end, and then I'll find myself at rock bottom, a strung-out stripper like my mother.
I can't let that happen.
I won't let that happen. — Toni Aleo

The only thing I collect is art. I collect it because I like looking at it. A lot of it is really personal stuff that my friends have made, paintings that my husband's mother made, and things that I bought. I buy abstract art on eBay, and I buy some outsider art on eBay, or what is called folk art, I buy a lot of. I have a lot of professional art work as well as more stuff my friends' kids make. To have a wall of art to look at, I feel really surrounded by love, because so much of the work is related to my friendships. — Kathleen Hanna

Do you dislike Children? I ask, entertained at the little one's cleverness in dodging capture attempts.
"I don't dislike them, nor do I like them. I've never understood why one must love children simply because they are children. I don't love people because they are people; in fact, I rarely like any people at all. If a child is somehow deserving of admiration, I certainly won't deny it, but why hand it out like candy on Queen's Day?"
I laugh, surprising him.
"Do you think me terribly cruel, then?"
"Actually, I agree. It is another great fault of mine my mother endeavored to correct. Children in general I've never cared for, though individual children I love very much."
-Quote from "Illusions of Fate" by Kiersten White p.17 — Kiersten White

Do you know anything about hearts, Jona? The Senta know hearts. Hearts are not one organ. Inside a mother's womb, two pulsing bags of blood seek their eternal mate."
Her hand reached out to his. She opened his palm, and traced a finger down his lifeline, then his loveline. She lifted it up to her own face. She placed it on her cheek.
"Lungs are fine apart," she said, "Hands do not need another but to clap. Brains gnarl like roots in the nothing of soul, and guts spin in knots around the nothing of hunger. But hearts are made by two complete parts merging together. Once the two pieces sense each other in the blood flow, they cross every bloody cliff inside of us. The arteries bind the halves close. The veins make love to each other in the life pulse that makes all life from love entwined. — J.M. McDermott

At first, you fall in love. You wake in the morning woozy and your twilight is lit with astral violet light. You spelunk down into each other until you come to possess some inner vision of each other that becomes one thing. Us. Together. And time passes. Like the forming of Earth itself, volcanoes rise and spew lava. Oceans appear. Rock plates shift. Sea turtles swim half the ocean to lay eggs on the mother island; songbirds migrate over continents for berries from a tree. You evolve
cosmically and geologically. You lose each other and find each other again. Every day. Until love gathers the turtles and the birds of your world and encompasses them, too. — Michael Paterniti

I lost myself immediately in one of the books, only emerging when the phone rang.
"Dashiell?" my father intoned. As if someone else with my voice might be answering the phone at my mother's apartment.
"Yes, Father?"
"Leeza and I would like to wish you a merry Christmas."
"Thank you, Father. And to you, as well."
[awkward pause]
[even more awkward pause]
"I hope your mother isn't giving you any trouble."
Oh, Father, I love it when you play this game.
"She told me if I clean all the ashes out of the grate, then I'll be able to help my sisters get ready for the ball."
"It's Christmas, Dashiell. Can't you give that attitude a rest?"
"Merry Christmas, Dad. And thanks for the presents."
"What presents?"
"I'm sorry - those were all from Mom, weren't they?"
"Dashiell ... "
"I gotta go. The gingerbread men are on — Rachel Cohn

You know, I gave you the benefit of the doubt earlier when I first encountered you, the raging beast - oh I mean bitch. But now
I truly think that if greats who devoted themselves and achieved in some way at killing evil with kindness like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mandela, Mother Teresa, well I think if any of them met you... they truly would break that seal of devotion and beat the bloody shit out of you."
"I take that as a compliment."
"Oh, I know you do. — Chelsea Ballinger