Mother At Seven Quotes & Sayings

When I was in fact a child, six and seven and eight years old, I was utterly baffled by the enthusiasm with which my cousin Brenda, a year and a half younger, accepted her mother's definition of her as someone who needed to go to bed at six-thirty and finish every bite of three vegetables, one of them yellow, with every meal. — Joan Didion

Be ready at seven and I'll take you to dinner first."
"First?" Just because I asked, didn't mean I plannedto go. I was a master at rationalization.
"Before I take you home and fuck you until you forget your mother's name."
"If I have any thought of my mama while you're fucking me, you're definitely doing something wrong. — Amber Kell

He didn't even apologize as he sat up, staring down at her. Was
he angry? She guessed not when he began to speak to his erection.
"I know. I can't believe she left us like this either. Cruel wench,
isn't she?"
After the long, frightening, horrible day she had, this was not
remotely how she expected to end it. And, against her will, she
smiled.
"Look. Now she's laughing at us."
Desperately fighting a bout of laughter, she ordered, "Stop
talking to it."
He shrugged. "Well you won't talk to him ... and he's feeling
awfully lonely. And I think you hurt his feelings." Then he made it
bounce twice in agreement.
Talaith covered her face and sighed. What exactly did her
mother tell her the seven signs of madness were? Well, a dragon
talking to his own shaft had to be one of them. — G.A. Aiken

Francesca actually felt her chin drop. "Mother," she said, shaking her head, "you really should have stopped at seven."
"Children, you mean?" Violet asked, sipping at her tea. "Sometimes I do wonder."
"Mother!" Hyacinth exclaimed.
Violet just smiled at her. "Salt?"
"It took her eight tries to get it right," Hyacinth announced, thrusting the salt cellar at her mother with a decided lack of grace.
"And does that mean that you, too, hope to have eight children?" Violet inquired sweetly.
"God no," Hyacinth said. With great feeling. And neither she nor Francesca could quite resist a chuckle after that. — Julia Quinn

You will eat no fried meats," he began abruptly. "You will eat no pastries, but you will eat plenty of vegetables. You will eat good, substantial, wholesome food - the kind of food your mother makes. You will go to bed at ten o'clock and arise punctually at seven o'clock. You will not smoke or drink or chew. And you will follow this regimen all year round, for as long as you row for me. A man cannot abuse his body for six months and then expect to row the other six months. — Daniel James Brown

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, 'So what's the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.' Most of her lifetime, it's true. But at the time it really was a big deal. — Madeleine Albright

Tell me what game Steph Landry and I used to play in the big dirt pile they made while they were digging my family's pool, back when we were both seven, or I'll know you're an alien replacement and you've got the real Steph up in your mother ship!"
I glared at him. "G.I. Joe meets Spelunker Barbie," I said. "And stop being so ridiculous. We have to go. We're going to end up at a bad table for lunch. — Meg Cabot

My father, who was a sergeant in the RAF during the Second World War, was killed in a hitchhiking accident while returning home on compassionate leave. As a result, my mother had to get work, as a nurse, and at seven the RAF put me into a boarding school and ex-orphanage called the Royal Wolverhampton School. — Eric Idle

Why would I go when everything I love is here?" "Who?" he said gruffly. "Hamlet with his charming manners? My poor unmanned brother upstairs? My mother-henning captain?" She smiled. "No." "Kendrick?" "Not even Kendrick." He was silent for a very long time. Then he looked away. "Whom do you love?" he asked, as if he couldn't have possibly cared less about the answer. "You, of course." He looked back at her then, but said nothing. "You're a wonderful man, Richard. I'm not sorry I had to travel over seven hundred years to find you. And I sincerely hope that betrothal contract was binding, because I have no intention of seeing it broken. — Lynn Kurland

The Prayer of the Middle-Aged Man
Amid the doctors in the Temple at twelve, between mother & host at Cana implored too soon, in the middle of disciples, the midst of the mob, between High-Priest and Procurator, among the occupiers,
between the malefactors, and 'stetit in medio, et dixit, pax vobis' and 'ascensit ad mediam Personarum et caelorum,' dear my Lord,mercy a sinner nailed dead-centre too, pray not to late,-
for also Ezra stood between the seven & the six, restoring the new Law. — John Berryman

My father was unwell when I was 11, had a stroke at 14 and died when I was 18. My mother going to work at seven in the morning and coming back to look after him and me and my brother left its mark on me. — John Caudwell

We both laugh. I like the sound of my mother's laugh. I wish she'd found these pills when I was a kid, that I wasn't learning the sound of my mother's laughter at the age of thirty-seven and at the price of a traumatic brain injury. I look over at her pillbox. It suddenly occurs to me that she took many more pills than should be prescribed solely for depression. What else could she be taking medication for? I wonder. — Lisa Genova

I've wandered as far west as I can go. Sitting now on the sand, I watch the sun blur into an aftermath. Reds finally marrying blues. Soon night will enfold us all. But the light is still not gone, not yet, and by it I can dimly see here my own dark hallway, or maybe it was just a foyer and maybe not dark at all, not in fact brightly lit, an afternoon sun blazing through the lead panes, now detected amidst what amounts to a long column of my yesterdays, towards the end, though not the very end of course, where I had stood at the age of seven, gripping my mother's wrists, trying as hard as I could to keep her from going. — Mark Z. Danielewski

My mother wanted me to learn how to read music. She'd given fiddles to my two older brothers, but they'd rebelled. I came along and my father said, "Oh, let Peter enjoy himself." What she did was leave musical instruments all around the house. Whistles, marimbas, squeeze boxes, a piano and organ. By age six or seven, I could bang out a simple tune on almost anything. I developed a good ear, so I didn't learn to read music until I taught myself at age eighteen, 'cause I was hearing so many good songs I couldn't possibly remember them all. — Pete Seeger

Yet as she tells the story, the change came about when that director stopped treating her like an antagonist and treated her like a person. He apologized for publicly calling her "baby-killer" and started spending time with her during her smoking breaks in the parking lot. Later, McCorvey accepted an invitation to church from a seven-year-old girl whose mother also worked at Operation Rescue. Pro-abortion forces had dismissed McCorvey - her dubious record of drug-dealing, alcohol, lesbianism, and rape made bad public relations - but Christian leaders took the time to counsel her in the faith, keeping her out of the public spotlight for half a year. "Ultimately, God is the one who changes hearts," says McCorvey now. "A Christian witness is the biggest tool in effecting change. — Philip Yancey

I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT KING TRITON. Specifically, King, why are you elderly but with the body of a teenage Beastmaster? How do you maintain those monster pecs? Do they have endocrinologists under the sea? Because I am scheduling you some bloodwork ...
... Question: How come, when they turn back into humans at the end of Beauty and the Beast, Chip is a four-year-old boy, but his mother, Mrs. Potts, is like 107? Perhaps you're thinking, "Lindy, you are remembering it wrong. That kindly, white-haired, snowman-shaped Mrs. Doubtfire situation must be Chip's grandmother." Not so, champ! She's his mom. Look it up. She gave birth to him four years ago ... As soon as you become a mother, apparently, you are instantly interchangeable with the oldest woman in the world, and / or sixteen ounces of boiling brown water with a hat on it. Take a sec and contrast Mrs. Pott's literally spherical body with the cut-diamond abs of King Triton, father of seven. — Lindy West

She didn't remember what airplanes had looked like in flight but she did remember being inside one. The memory was sharper than most of her other memories from the time before, which she thought must mean that this had been very close to the end. She would have been seven or eight years old, and she'd gone to New York City with her mother, though she didn't remember why. She remembered flying back to Toronto at night, her mother drinking a glass of something with ice cubes that clinked and caught the light. She remembered the drink but not her mother's face. She'd pressed her forehead to the window and saw clusters and pinpoints of light in the darkness, scattered constellations linked by roads or alone. The beauty of it, the loneliness, the thought of all those people living out their lives, each porch light marking another house, another family. — Emily St. John Mandel

My mother-in-law has come round to our house at Christmas seven years running. This year we're having a change. We're going to let her in. — Les Dawson

THE NEXT day another Secret Seven meeting was held, but this time it was at Colin's, in his little summer-house. It wasn't such a good place as Peter's shed, because it had an open doorway with no door, and they were not allowed to have an oil-stove in it. However, Colin's mother had asked all the Secret Seven to tea, so it was clear they would have to have their next meeting at his house, and the little summer-house was the only place where they could talk in secret. — Enid Blyton

There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My mother, who had organized the party, told me that the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before, and that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first book. — Neil Gaiman

My mother taught me to knit when I was seven. I forgot about knitting until one day I saw Marion at the counter with hers and confessed that I knew how. Confessed is the right word. In those days, in the early 1980s, knitting was not a hobby a preteen would readily admit to. But Marion, every enthusiastic, pounced upon me and insisted that I show her something I'd made. I did
a misshapen scarf
which she priased exravagantly. she lent me a raspberry-colored wool for another project, a hat for myself. Since then I've been knitting pretty continuously. It's addictive and it's soothing, and fora a few minutes anyway, it makes me feel closer to my mother. — Anita Shreve

There are many memories. but I'll tell you the one I like to think of best of all. It's just a homely everyday thing, but to me it is the happiest of them all. It is evening time here in the old house and the supper is cooking and the table is set for the whole family. It hurts a mother, Laura, when the plates begin to be taken away one by one. First there are seven and then six and then five...and on down to a single plate. So I like to think of the table set for the whole family at supper time. The robins are singing in the cottonwoods and the late afternoon sun is shining across the floor... The children are playing out in the yard. I can hear their voices and happy laughter. There isn't much to that memory is there? Out of a lifetime of experiences you would hardly expect that to be the one I would choose as the happiest, would you? But it is. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Your brother?" St. Clair points above my bed to the only picture I've hung up. Seany is grinning at the camera and pointing at one of my mother's research turtles,which is lifting its neck and threatening to take away his finger. Mom is doing a study on the lifetime reproductive habits of snapping turtles and visits her brood in the Chattahoochie River several times a month. My brother loves to go with her, while I prefer the safety of our home. Snapping turtles are mean.
"Yep.That's Sean."
"That's a little Irish for a family with tartan bedspreads."
I smile. "It's kind of a sore spot. My mom loved the name,but Granddad-my father's father-practically died when he heard it.He was rooting for Malcolm or Ewan or Dougal instead."
St. Clair laughs. "How old is he?"
"Seven.He's in the second grade."
"That's a big age difference."
"Well,he was either an accident or a last-ditch effort to save a failing marriage.I've never had the nerve to ask which. — Stephanie Perkins

We say 'far away'; the Zulu has for that a word which means, in our sentence form, 'There where someone cries out: "Oh mother, I am lost." ' The Fuegian soars above our analytic wisdom with a seven-syllabled word whose precise making is, 'They stare at one another, each waiting for the other to volunteer to do what both wish, but are not able to do. — Martin Buber

Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles. — Holly Black

William had to be at his office at eight, so his mother got up at seven o' clock to prepare him. He was usually late, or on the verge of lateness. But nothing could hurry him. — D.H. Lawrence

Small children smoking, and the mother is not aware that it is because the breast has been taken away. In all primitive communities a seven-year-old child, or even an eight or nine-year-old child, will continue breast-feeding. Then there is a satisfaction and smoking will not be so necessary. That's why in primitive communities men are not so much interested in women's breasts; there is no problem that somebody will attack them. Nobody looks at the breasts. — Rajneesh

My mother was 18 when I was born. She split with my father when I was 6, and married another man when I was about 7. My mother was about 25, my stepfather was about 26, I'm six or seven, I was looking at them and I knew they were just too young. — Theresa Russell

Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years.
My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven. My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots" he said.
But she didn't recognize me at all.
She stared at me. She didn't know who I was.
Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know what day it is?"
She said, staring, "All the people have gone."
I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, and advised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me.
It was as if I was trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers."
-Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X — Malcolm X

On that day so long ago, in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, in the Massacre River, my mother did fly. Weighted down by my body inside hers, she leaped from Dominican soil into the water, and out again on the Haitian side of the river. She glowed red when she came out, blood clinging to her skin, which at that moment looked as though it were in flames. — Edwidge Danticat

My mother had died when I wrote my first book. I was twenty-seven, so it was right at the beginning of my writing life. I don't know if she had lived, if I would have done it, certainly not quite like I did. But, you can't rethink it. You wrote what you wrote, it meant something to other people, and that's your good. — Anne Roiphe

He thought he would light the fire when he got inside, and make himself some breakfast, just to pass away the time; but he did not seem able to handle anything from a scuttleful of coals to a teaspoon without dropping it or falling over it, and making such a noise that he was in mortal fear that it would wake Mrs. G. up, and that she would think it was burglars and open the window and call "Police!" and then these two detectives would rush in and handcuff him, and march him off to the police-court. He was in a morbidly nervous state by this time, and he pictured the trial, and his trying to explain the circumstances to the jury, and nobody believing him, and his being sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude, and his mother dying of a broken heart. So he gave up trying to get breakfast, and wrapped himself up in his overcoat and sat in the easy-chair till Mrs. G came down at half-past seven. — Jerome K. Jerome

Liberated in Germany by the Americans, seven-year-old Valya Brekeleva and her family of slave labourers went home to Novgorod as non-persons. "Most of the people from our village who went to Latvia survived. But most of those who were sent to Germany had died. For those of us who remained, the suspicion was always there." Most of her family were killed by one side or the other in the course of the war. Her mother died in 1947, worn out by the struggle to keep her daughters alive. She was thirty-six. Her father completed his sentence for "political crimes" and came home from the Urals in 1951, an old man. Even after Valya had completed university and applied for work at a Kazan shipbuilders in the 1960s, when the manager saw that her papers showed her to be an ex-Nazi prisoner he said grimly: "Before we consider anything else, we have got to establish whether you have done damage to the state. — Max Hastings

Here I am looking at my lovely ten-year-old daughter, Maggie, in her white dress, singing Protestant hymns with the choir at the Plymouth Church of the Brethren when I should be at Mass praying for the repose of the soul of my mother, Angela McCourt, mother of seven, believer, sinner, though when I contemplate her seventy-three years on this earth I can't believe the Lord God Almighty on His throne would even dream of consigning her to the flames. A God like that wouldn't deserve the time of day. — Frank McCourt

I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband.
It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and
coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he'd left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he'd expect a big dinner, and I'd spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted. This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's, but I knew that's what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard's mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself. — Sylvia Plath

1. Are her lips like the hot chocolate your mother made
During the winter months when you were seven? Or have you not tasted her well enough to find the fine granules of cocoa that lightly come with each kiss?

2. Do you know her favorite songs? Not when she is happy, but when she is sad. What music reaches inside her ribcage and softly consoles her heart?

3. When she is sad, are you on the phone or are you at her door? Words do not wipe away tears, fingers do.

4. Do you know all the things that keep her up at night? Do you know why she has gone three days without sleep? Do you know of the insurmountable waves of sadness that wash over her like a tsunami?

5. Do you know the things to say that will calm her heartbeat? The places to touch? The places to love?

6. Everytime you see her do you kiss her like it's the last time but love her like it's the first?

7. Do you love her?

8. Do you love her? — Nishat Ahmed

Well," he said with an affected sigh, "you have my approval, at least."
"Why?" Hyacinth asked suspiciously.
"It would be an excellent match," he continued. "If nothing else, think of the children."
She knew she'd regret it, but still she had to ask. "What children?"
He grinned. "The lovely lithping children you could have together. Garethhhh and Hyathinthhhh. Hyathinth and Gareth. And the thublime Thinclair tots."
Hyacinth stared at him like he was an idiot.
Which he was, she was quite certain of it.
She shook her head. "How on earth Mother managed to give birth to seven perfectly normal children and one freak is beyond me."
"Thith way to the nurthery." Gregory laughed as she
headed back into the room. "With the thcrumptious little
Tharah and Thamuel Thinclair. Oh, yeth, and don't forget
wee little Thuthannah! — Julia Quinn

What in the seven hells do you think you're doing?" Lock shoved his brother up against the wall of the guest suite they were staying in and glared into Deep's bottomless black eyes. "Why are you acting this way? Are you trying to scare her off?" Deep laughed harshly and brushed off his brother's hands. "As if we had a shot with her. Did you see those curves? She's fucking gorgeous - an elite." "We're not bad looking," Lock objected. "I've heard Earth females find our kind attractive." "The other Kindred races, maybe. But not the Twin Kindred. We scare them, Lock. The idea of one woman with two males at once frightens them out of their skulls." "They can't all be scared - there are plenty of Twin Kindred with brides aboard the Mother ship." "Not nearly as many as Beast Kindred and Blood Kindred. Why don't you just face it, brother? Calling an Earth female as a bride is a bad idea." "You — Evangeline Anderson

I suppose it must be admitted that I was raised in a "dysfunctional" family, but in truth, I do not think I had any sense of that as I was growing up. Probably part of the reason was that all of my extended kin had families at least as dysfunctional as mine. Just to give a little of the flavor of it, my "Aunt Fern," who lived just across the street and was one of the most present and puissant female relatives in my life, was, to be genealogically precise, my mother's brother's, first wife's, second husband's, father's, 3rd, 4th, and 5th wife. (She married "Uncle Lew" three times in the course of her seven matrimonial ventures.) — Carlfred Broderick

Son, you think I had seven boys because I winked at your mother? — Nicole Edwards

As if reading his mind, Lily huffed. "You're as predictable as the spring rains, son of mine, and as boring as drying paint. Unless there's an emergency, you're home every night by seven, you eat dinner by yourself, go for a run, watch exactly one hour of TV by yourself, and go to bed at ten o'clock. If God ever loses his watch, he only has to look at Lance Beaufort to get back on schedule."
...
"I've been having trouble with my phone," he tried.
Lily took two strides to the desk, leaned over it with both hands braced on the surface, and stared.
"Okay, yes! I have been over there. But it's for work. And ... and it's work related!"
"Oh? Explain that to me, because I thought you were the sheriff, not in training for a role in Lassie. — Eli Easton