Mother Card Quotes & Sayings

Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins. — Erma Bombeck

Magic carpet rides, rune magic, Ali Baba and visions of the Holy Mother, astral travel and the future in the dregs of a glass of red wine. Buddha. Frodo's journey into Mordor. The transubstantiation of the sacrament. Dorothy and Toto. The Easter Bunny. Space aliens. The Thing in the closet. The Resur-rection and the Life at the turn of a card ... I've believed them all at one time or another. Or pretended to. Or pretended not to.
And now? What do I believe right now?
'I believe that being happy is the only important thing,' I told him at last.
Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the hear. Bitter. Sweet. Alive. — Joanne Harris

You know, I don't play the race card a lot. I'm half-black, half-white, and I'm proud of - my skin is brown. The world sees me as a black man, but my mother didn't raise me as a black man. She didn't raise me as a white guy. — Shemar Moore

Everyone would remember Peter for nineteen minutes of his life, but what about the other nine million? Lacy would be the keeper of those, because it was the only way for that part of Peter to stay alive. For every recollection of him that involved a bullet or a scream, she would have a hundred others: of a little boy splashing in a pond, or riding a bicycle for the first time, or waving from the top of a jungle gym. Of a kiss good night, or a crayoned Mother's Day card, or a voice off-key in the shower. She would string them together - the moments when her child had been just like other people's. She would wear them, precious pearls, every day of her life; because if she lost them, then the boy she had loved and raised and known would really be gone. — Jodi Picoult

I took out my first library card ... I spent most of my Saturdays at the library (no interruptions) breathing in the world of penniless shoeshine boys who, with goodness and perseverance, became rich, rich men, and gave baskets of goodies to the poor on holidays. The little princesses who were mistaken for maids, and the long-lost children mistaken for waifs, became more real to me than our house, our mother, our school or Mr. Freeman — Maya Angelou

Just looking at her mother made Cami think about how having another mouth to feed in the house would be a huge burden. She was working her butt off at two jobs already as a registered nurse and a waitress. With a mortgage payment, student loan debt, credit card debt, and loads of other bills that she once did not think about twice, her mother was forced to work longer hours after her now ex-husband abandoned his family for another woman. — Valenciya Lyons

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog. — Sandra Cisneros

Her mother waved a card at her in farewell. "Bye. Will you be home for dinner? I'm making midlife crisis." "Oh," Blue said, "I guess I'll have a slice. If you're making it already. — Maggie Stiefvater

Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children's letters - sometimes very hastily - but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, "Dear Jim: I loved your card." Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, "Jim loved your card so much he ate it." That to me was one of the highest compliments I've ever received. He didn't care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it. — Maurice Sendak

Most people didn't know that his mother was black. She died when he was three, and his Italian father raised him. He didn't hold that up as some kind of "get in free" card. The reality was, his entire life he walked a tightrope between his two realities. More often than not he took the road of least resistance - his white privilege. — Olivia Hill

Loren looked at Christ on the cross behind the Mother Superior's head. She remembered an old joke, one she heard when she first got here. A boy is getting all Ds and Fs in math so his parents send him to Catholic school. On his first report card, his parents are shocked to see their son getting straight As. When his parents ask him why, he says, "Well, when I went into the chapel and saw that guy nailed to a plus sign, I knew they were serious." Mother — Harlan Coben

Tell her how much all the little things she does all year long that seem to go unnoticed really mean to you." With a $2.59 card. Mother's Day is built on that idea. — Shonda Rhimes

How many times are you two going to have to save me from myself before this whole drama runs its course?" asked Peter. "I think ... six times," said Father. "No, eight," said Mother. "You two think you're so cute," said Peter. "Mm-hm." "Yep. — Orson Scott Card

Oh, Val," said Father. "All you have to do is live your life, and everyone around you will be happier."
"No greatness, then."
"Val," said Mother, "goodness trumps greatness any day."
"Not in the history books," said Valentine.
"Then the wrong people are writing history, aren't they?" said Father. — Orson Scott Card

For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling vaguely guilty. — William S. Burroughs

The implicit optimism of the [field service post card] is worth noting - the way it offers no provision for transmitting news like "I have lost my left leg" or "I have been admitted into hospital wounded and do not expect to recover." Because it provided no way of saying "I am going up the line again," its users had to improvise. Wilfred Owen had an understanding with his mother that when he used a double line to cross out "I am being sent down to the base," he meant he was at the front again. Close to brilliant is the way the post card allows one to admit to no state of health between being "quite" well, on the one hand, and, on the other, being so sick that one is in hospital. — Paul Fussell

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

A female salmon lays three thousand eggs a year - and has yet to receive a Mother's Day card from one of them. — Joan Rivers

Hadrian caught her arm. "You go back and we'll continue searching."
"I'm not going to rest while you risk your life. Are you nuts? You stay. I stay."
Hadrian cupped her cheek. "Think of the babies. They need their mother. You're much more fierce than I am. Go back and we'll keep looking."
She hated it whenever he pulled the children card on her. It was the one and only thing he knew she wouldn't argue against. "You're a rank bastard, Hadrian Scalera!"
Instead of getting angry, he flashed that charming grin that always melted her heart. "Hadrian Erixour." He pressed his helmet to hers and turned her around to head back without him. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I have graded my separate works from A to D. The grades I hand out to myself do not place me in literary history. I am comparing myself with myself. Thus can I give myself an A-plus for Cat's Cradle, while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare. The report card is chronological, so you can plot my rise and fall on graph paper, if you like:
Player Piano B
The Sirens of Titan A
Mother Night A
Cat's Cradle A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater A
Slaughterhouse-Five A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June D
Breakfast of Champions C
Wampeters, Foma & Grandfalloons C
Slapstick D
Jailbird A
Palm Sunday C — Kurt Vonnegut

The ocean has a voice, one that haunts me with its music every moment I'm awake. Even in my dreams it tugs on me, building the ache inside my bones until I can't ignore who I am. My mother says the water is dangerous, that beyond the innocent whitecaps they're waiting, but I never hear her over the call of the sea. — Tabi Card

My courage is nothing but borrowed courage." "Not borrowed," said Mother. "Stored up. In us. Like a bank. We've seen your courage and we saved some for you when you temporarily ran out and needed some of it back." "Cash flow problem, that's all it was," said Father. — Orson Scott Card

I don't know what the instinct is, to save every report card, every half-sentence scribbled note, but my mother did it pretty effectively, and I've done it to a fare-thee-well. — Sally Mann

Only the mother tree remained in the middle of the clearing, bathed in light, heavy with fruit, festooned with blossoms, a perpetual celebrant of the ancient mystery of life. — Orson Scott Card

It's his mother's birthday? But he didn't tell me. I don't have a card. I don't have a gift. How could he do this to me?
Men are crap. — Sophie Kinsella

You don't have to come with me," Ash said. "I only brought you along because you're good with a knife. And got us the uniforms. And the explosives."
Lila snorted. "Sorry I'm not pulling my weight."
"This may not be your idea," Ash said doggedly, "but it's what we're going to do."
"Is it? Are you really going to start playing the prince card after all?"
"Don' start in about my mother the queen, because I don't want to hear it."
"All right, then, as your peer and absolute equal, I can't help thinking this is a really bad idea. — Cinda Williams Chima

As a young wife and mother living in a pre-Pinterest world, I used to glue-gun bows and small pieces of minutia together methodically. I was an insomniac proudly penning thank you notes longer than the Declaration of Independence to every person who had even sent me a card. I was reorganizing my linen closet, ironing placemats, straight-ironing my hair, and never saying no to any person that asked me for a favor. And, I forgot to mention, I didn't really like myself.
I felt like a fuzzy, carbon copy of myself. I felt the passion, the conviction, and the grit somewhere inside of me yet a bunch of preconceived ideas somehow got in the way. — Ann Brasco

You killed more people than anybody in history."
"Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me. — Orson Scott Card

So the I.F. is spying on Earth."
"Just as a mother spies on her children at play in the yard."
"Good to know you're looking out for us, Mummy. — Orson Scott Card

Nobody is excused from the excellence trend. Babies are not excused. Starting right after they get out of the womb, modern babies are exposed to instructional flashcards designed to make them the best babies they can possibly be, so they can get into today's competitive preschools. Your eighties baby sees so many flashcards that he never gets an unobstructed view of his parents' faces. As an adult, he'll carry around a little wallet card that says "7x9=63," because it will remind him of mother. — Dave Barry

In May I received an anonymous Mother's Day card. This puzzled me. I would have noticed if I had ever had children, surely? — Neil Gaiman

Problems are like top trumps. I have a pretty good card: Adulterous Mum. But Jordana's is still better: Tumour Mother. — Joe Dunthorne

Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt. — Kay Redfield Jamison

This time of year," she said, "people's consciences gnaw at them. They give away truckloads of canned goods and quote Dickens and wring their hands over the 'less fortunate.'" We boarded the Metro and took seats perpendicular to each other. "But God forbid anyone should address why they're poor in the first place, or try to change the structures that keep them poor. Then the 'less fortunate' turn into 'welfare queens' and 'derelicts.' But if I were a lobbyist whoring on behalf of some transnational corporation, I'd never hear the word 'derelict.'"

"So when it comes to taking care of poor people," I said, "if Mother Teresa is the Hallmark card, then you're the electric bill. — Jeri Smith-Ready

Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother? — Orson Scott Card

For that was mom's trump card: she was the mother, and so possessed a mysterious and unquestioned authority. Dad was the boss, but Mom was the power. — Joyce Carol Oates

My mother never liked Mother's Day. She thought it was a fake holiday dreamed up by Hallmark to commodify deep sentiments that couldn't be expressed with a card. — Meghan O'Rourke

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

Peace. That's what salaam means. Peace unto you.
The words brought forth an echo from Ender's memory. His mother's voice reading to him softly, when he was very young.
...
The kiss, the word, the peace were with him still. I am only what I remember, and Alai is my friend in a memory so intense that they can't tear him out. Like Valentine, the strongest memory of all. — Orson Scott Card

Corazon smiled at him. "You know how your mother keeps her Christmas card list? How she sends to people who send her one, and that list gets longer and longer every year?
- "Yeah," Jack muttered. "I have to lick the damn stamps."
-Watch your mouth," Cora reprimanded. "See love's like that. Once you give it, even by accident, you're on that list forever. — Jodi Picoult

There are all kinds of ways and reasons that mothers can and should be praised. But for cultivating a sense of invisibility, martyrdom and tirelessly working unnoticed and unsung? Those are not reasons. Praising women for standing in the shadows? Wrong. Where is the greeting card that praises the kinds of mothers I know? Or better yet, the kind of mother I was raised by? I need a card that says: "Happy Mother's Day to the mom who taught me to be strong, to be powerful, to be independent, to be competitive, to be fiercely myself and fight for what I want." Or "Happy Birthday to a mother who taught me to argue when necessary, to raise my voice for my beliefs, to not back down when I know I am right." Or "Mom, thanks for teaching me to kick ass and take names at work. Get well soon." Or simply "Thank you, Mom, for teaching me how to make money and feel good about doing it. Merry Christmas. — Shonda Rhimes

A grieving son was given the opportunity to write parting words on a card at his mother's funeral. He quoted the verse, And morning came and Jesus was standing on the shore. — Megan McKenna

I hardly have any names on my dance card," Emma said, slightly despairing. This was not how she imagined her debut.
"There are just four names on mine," Olivia said. "But I think the gentlemen only agreed to escape my mother. I really can't blame them. — Maya Rodale

There's not a day that goes by that I don't bless myself with holy water and then get in my car and rub the medal of the Virgin Mary that she gave me and say a Hail Mary for my mother. And then I kiss her Mass card that's right there on the dashboard. — Peter Criss

The real magic - the magic we'd lived with all our lives, my mother's magic of charms and cantrips, of salt by the door and a red silk sachet to placate the little gods - had turned sour on us that summer, somehow, like a spider that turns from good luck to bad at the stroke of midnight, spinning its web to catch our dreams. And for every little spell of charm, for every card dealt and every rune cast and every sign scratched against a doorway to divert the path of malchance, the wind just blew a little harder, tugging at our clothes, sniffing at us like a hungry dog, moving us here and moving us there. — Joanne Harris

I was never a bright student, potentially never good at dramatics; I was sometimes given one-line roles that I was happy to do so that I could bunk classes. My mother used to cry three times a year, and that is when my report card used to come. — Ranbir Kapoor

When I came home and showed my mother my report card with a mark of 98 in arithmetic, she wanted to know who had gotten the other two points. — Sam Levenson

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

My mother, stuck in Two Rivers with a head full of unfulfilled dreams, escaped every chance she got via the Two Rivers Free Library - her library card both a passport and necessary currency for her travels. — T. Greenwood

Ender had never spoken of that to anyone, not even to Mother, but had kept it as a memory of holiness, of how his mother loved him when she thought that no one, not even he, could see or hear. That was what Alai had given him: a gift so sacred that even Ender could not be allowed to understand what it meant. — Orson Scott Card

You never realize how much your mother loves you till you explore the attic - and find every letter you ever sent her, every finger painting, clay pot, bead necklace, Easter chicken, cardboard Santa Claus, paperlace Mother's Day card and school report since day one. — Pam Brown

Oh, you're willing to concede God's existence, but that's not what I meant. I mean believe in him the way a mother means it when she says to her son, I believe in you. She's not saying she believes that he exists
what is that worth?
she's saying she believes in his future. She trusts that he'll do all the good that is in him to do. She puts the future in his hands. That's how she believes in him. — Orson Scott Card

You were baptized?"
"My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it." The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. "Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in. — Orson Scott Card

That's what Father and Mother are, thought Nafai. They stay together, not because of any gain, but because of the gift. Father doesn't stay with Mother because she is good for him, but rather because together they can do good for us, and for many others. — Orson Scott Card

So this is love, he said to himself, trying to examine his own overwhelming feelings with the rational fragment of his mind. This is the powerful, horrible longing that made Mother marry that miserable tyrant I had to call Father. How many unbelievably stupid heroes in stories did insanely dangerous things because they were in love? More to the pint, how many insane things am I going to do because of it? — Orson Scott Card

You don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them to, Mother, you'll always feel betrayed. And because eventually everybody dies, you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat, Mother. You're the one who uses our love for us to try to control us. — Orson Scott Card