Maman Quotes & Sayings

They have the same relationship that all progressive middle-class women have with their cleaning ladies, although Maman really thinks she is the exception: a good old rose-colored paternalistic relationship (we offer her coffee, give her decent pay, never scold, pass on old clothes and broken furniture, and show an interest in her children, and in return she brings us roses and brown and beige crocheted bedspreads). — Muriel Barbery

You've honey on your tongue, ma fifille," Maman once said. "If you'd lived in earlier times, you could have been a troubadour."
" ... There aren't any troubadours any more, are there, Maman?" Marie said. "And if there were, girls wouldn't be allowed to be one."
"Probably not," Maman agreed sadly.
"I'll be one anyway," I said with determination.
Maman smiled and gently pulled on my hair. "I'm sure you will, ma fifille, a clever girl like you. You can do whatever you like in this world if you just have courage enough. — Kate Forsyth BITTER GREENS

It is difficult to resist a force of nature, Maman. His seduction is like all my senses struck by bolts of lightning. — Nicole Jordan

I noticed Maman and Papa dancing. Papa looked like he'd rather be shot, but Maman was very happy. — Robin Bridges

The level of your reach will be the level of your income — Batya Maman - Sabag

Maman's death: perhaps it is the one thing in my life that I have not responded to neurotically. My grief has not been hysterical, scarcely visible to others (perhaps because the notion of "theatralizing" my mother's death would have been intolerable); and doubtless, more hysterically parading my depression, driving everyone away, ceasing to live socially, I would have been less unhappy. And I see that the non-neurotic is not good, not the right thing at all. — Roland Barthes

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

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled over like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, waiting in front of a cafe, the incessant drone of the motor, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights that was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours. — Albert Camus

Maman!
The word seems to come out of me all on its own. I think it's strange my mouth would do that. The rest of my head knows she's never there. — Claire King

Dreamed of maman again. She was telling me - O cruelty! - that I didn't really love her. But I took it calmly, because I was so sure it wasn't true.

The idea that death would be a kind of sleep. But it would be horrible if we had to dream eternally.

(And this morning, her birthday. I always gave her a rose. Bought two at the little market of Mers Sultan and put them on my desk) — Roland Barthes

The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days ... and yet we were profoundly separated from her. — Simone De Beauvoir

Pops says he loves me just the way I am, but not everyone in the world is like my father. Maman, for example. A difficult and dissatisfied woman. She made me learn flower arranging and how to walk properly
books on my head, the whole bit. These things ruined me for life. Now it sets my teeth on edge when I see flowers carelessly flung into a vase, and I'm forever looking at other women in the street and thinking, [I]Sloppy ... sloppy[/I]. And I know I shouldn't care, and I want to poke myself in the eye for caring, but I care anyway, so thanks for that, Maman. — Helen Oyeyemi

The house was cozy, with a fire burning in every fireplace. The familiar scents of tea brewing in the samovar and Maman's warmed cherry brandy smelled like love to me. — Robin Bridges

You will like her," he persisted. "Egad, she's after your own heart, maman! She shot me in the arm."
"Voyons, do you think that is what I like? — Georgette Heyer

He was trying to make it up to her, asking for forgiveness and seeking redemption all at once, sacrificing himself for her. It was a glimpse of who he'd once been, the poet her maman had fallen in love with. That man, the one before the war, might have known another way, might have found the perfect words to heal their fractured past. — Kristin Hannah

It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed. — Albert Camus

Emilienne wore Maman's wedding dress. Just after the ceremony, Emilienne glanced in the mirror. She saw not her own reflection but a tall empty vase. — Leslye Walton

Morning sunlight gave everything a golden, beautiful glow. "We were supposed to have time," she whispered, feeling tears start. How often had she imagined a new beginning for her and Papa, for all of them? They would come together after the war, Isabelle and Vianne and Papa, learn to laugh and talk and be a family again. Now it would never happen; she would never get to know her father, never feel the warmth of his hand in hers, never fall asleep on the divan beside him, never be able to say all that needed to be said between them. Those words were lost, turned into ghosts that would drift away, unsaid. They would never be the family maman had promised. — Kristin Hannah

That's it!" "Anton," her mother gasped. "You startled me." "Sorry, my love." Papa patted her hand as she returned to sit beside him on the edge of the bed. "But I've just had the most astounding idea." "What is it?" The question rang simultaneously from both Nicole and her mother. Her papa smiled. A scheming, devilish, piratical smile that one would expect to see right before a blade ran him through. Nicole flopped onto the divan. "Nicki's going to take a little trip to New Orleans." "But why?" Maman asked. "She just got home." Papa rubbed his palms against his thighs in anticipation. "Don't you see? It will solve everything. It will keep Nicki away from Jenkins and secure the future of Renard Shipping at the same time." "How?" Nicole ventured, somehow certain she'd not like the answer. Her papa's grin confirmed it. "By giving me the next best thing to a son." "And that is . . . ?" her mother prompted. "A son-in-law. — Karen Witemeyer

Where is your maman?
I don't know.
I think we've gone and lost her, Pea. Papa's voice dissolves into the colours behind my eyes.
I'm sorry Papa. I don't know how to find her, I say. — Claire King

[Emilio's dinner with FM Banier]
Gradually I abandon the conversation (suffering because the others might suppose I am doing so for reasons of contempt.) FMB (supported by Youssef) embodies a strong (and ingenious) system of values, codes, seductions, styles; but even as the system gains in consistency, I feel excluded from it. And little by little I cease struggling, I withdraw, without concern for how I appear to the others. Thus it begins by an initially slight disaffection for sociability which becomes quite radical. As it develops, it gradually combines with a hostalgia for what remains living for me: maman. And ultimately I fall into an abyss of suffering. — Roland Barthes

So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too. As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself-so like a brother, really-I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. — Albert Camus

Given Fanon's subsequent traumatic encounter with the white gaze ('Look, maman, a negro'), it is ironic that it was he and Manville who gazed at the children and could not take their eyes off them. They had never seen a girl with truly red hair, or such a blond boy, and they were fascinated. — David Macey

Maman," she shouted. "Wait for us. — Catherine Kean

I called him Grandfather, because according to him you do not have to be of the same blood or same tribe to be a member of the same family, but in truth I should have called him Maman. He was the only mother I ever knew. — Isabel Allende

Afternoon with Michel, sorting maman's belongings.
Began the day by looking at her photographs.
A cruel mourning begins again (but had never ended).
To begin again without resting. Sisyphus. — Roland Barthes

Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. — Albert Camus

Maman walks ahead, leaning back as she goes down the hill, walking so fast her hair can't keep up. — Claire King

(yesterday)
From the terrace of the Flore, I see a woman sitting on the windowsill of the bookstore La Hune; she is holding a glass in one hand, apparently bored; the whole room behind her is filled with men, their backs to me. A cocktail party.
May cocktails. A sad, depressing sensation of a seasonal and social stereotype. What comes to my mind is that maman is no longer here and life, stupid life, continues. — Roland Barthes

The Holy Mother has many faces, but you know it's her from her blue cloak. She is said to be the spirit in all women."
"Look, here she is naked and the baby Jesus has wings, " said Lucien.
"That is not the Holy Mother, that's Venus and that's not Jesus, that is Cupid, the Roman god of love."
"Wouldn't she have the spirit of the Holy Mother as well?"
"No, she is a pagan myth."
"What about Maman? Is the spirit of the Holy Mother in her?"
"No, Lucien, your mother is also a pagan myth. Come, look at these paintings of wrestlers. — Christopher Moore

He asked me why I had put Maman in the home. I answered that it was because I didn't have the money to have her looked after and cared for. He asked me if it had been hard on me, and I answered that Maman and I didn't expect anything from each other anymore, or from anyone else either, and that we had both gotten used to our new lives. — Albert Camus

Your maman was in my room last night."

"And I was not." His tone was glum. — Sharon Cameron

All he wanted was enough time to consider all his options without being dragged into his household's petty squabbles or being nagged by his wife about that damnable pilgrimage. Was that so much to ask?
Apparently so, for he'd yet to find a peaceful moment at Caen, not with Marguerite sulking and Aimar lurking and Will acting put-upon and Geoff wanting to lay plans and Richard strutting around as if he were the incarnation of Roland and poor Tilda grieving over Maman's absence and his father refusing to heed any voice but his own. — Sharon Kay Penman

Men always failed Maman in the end. They forever fell disastrously short of whatever ideal she held them up to. What began with exuberance and passion always ended with terse accusations and hateful words, with rage and weeping fits and the flinging of cooking utensils and collapse. High drama. Maman was incapable of either starting or ending a relationship without excess. — Khaled Hosseini

I moved from the holy land (Israel) to the land of opportunities (USA) — Batya Sabag-Maman

I waver - in the dark - between the observation (but is it entirely accurate?) that I'm unhappy only by moments, by jerks and surges, sporadically, even if such spasms are close together - and the conviction that deep down, in actual fact, I am continually, all the time, unhappy since maman's death. — Roland Barthes

My maman said I was an old soul, caught up in a past life, which I'd never been able to shake, from the way I dressed, to my shop, and my dreamy obsession with the past. Maybe she was right. Perhaps that's why I found the loosening of traditions so heartbreaking. It — Rebecca Raisin

Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about. In my prison, when the sky turned red and a new day slipped into my cell, I found out that she was right. — Albert Camus

I don't want you stashing yourself away with your Smolny friends tonight," Maman said. "I want to see you dancing with lots of handsome young princes and grand dukes."
I rolled my eyes and stared out the window at the snow-covered city. I resolved to dance with the ugliest and the poorest men in the ballroom
if they should ask me. — Robin Bridges

I didn't cry out and I didn't weep when I was told that my son Henri was a prisoner in his own world, when it was confirmed that he is one of those children who don't hear us, don't speak to us, even though they're neither deaf nor mute. He is also one of those children we must love from a distance, neither touching, nor kissing, not smiling at them because every one of their senses would be assaulted by the odour of our skin, by the intensity of our voices, the texture of our hair, the throbbing of our hearts. Probably he'll never call me maman lovingly, even if he can pronounce the world poire with all the roundness and sensuality of the oi sound. He will never understand why I cried when he smiled for the first time. He won't know that, thanks to him, every spark of joy has become a blessing and that I will keep waging war against autism, even if I know already that it's invincible. Already, I am defeated, stripped bare, beaten down. — Kim Thuy

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday. — Albert Camus

My Maman told me that only the crazy ones and the passionate ones accomplish anything in life. — B.K.S. Iyengar

It had been learned that my mother had died recently at the home. Inquiries had then been made in Marengo. The investigators had learned that I had "shown insensitivity" the day of Maman's funeral. "You understand," my lawyer said, "it's a little embarrassing for me to have to ask you this. But it's very important. And it will be a strong argument for the prosecution if I can't come up with some answers. — Albert Camus

Older people are always searching for treasure, but she thinks they look in the wrong places. If they knew about her herb garden, the roses in bloom, and Maman's horse, Beth is certain people would value all these things. They would love them like she does when she sits behind her house, breathing, dreaming. — J.J. Brown