Mother's Day Says Quotes & Sayings

Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator's mother carries her child up the stairs and the reader follows, for days. But World War I passes in a paragraph. I needed 125 pages to get from Labor Day to Christmas vacation. In six more words, here's spring. — Richard Powers

What does it say?" asked my lord.
"It says, 'Good-night, God keep you all the night!'--just what she used to say when we were together. Every night she used to say that to me, and every morning she said, 'God bless you all the day!' So you see I am quite safe all the time---- — Frances Hodgson Burnett

When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf, And the world makes you King for a day, Then go to the mirror and look at yourself, And see what that guy has to say. For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife, Whose judgement upon you must pass. The feller whose verdict counts most in your life Is the guy staring back from the glass. He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest, For he's with you clear up to the end, And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test If the guy in the glass is your friend. You may be like Jack Horner and "chisel" a plum, And think you're a wonderful guy, But the man in the glass says you're only a bum If you can't look him straight in the eye. You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years, And get pats on the back as you pass, But your final reward will be heartaches and tears If you've cheated the guy in the glass. Dale Wimbrow — Shawn Jones

Joe asks how long they've been there one of them says fuck off another says a week a third calls him a drunk homeless fuck and tells him to go away. Joe asks how long they will wait the singular answer is as long as it takes and somewhere inside the house five-day-old children sleep under siege because their mother has a nice smile and beautiful hair and can recite lines on camera. — James Frey

The pure whiteness, dazzling in the sun, was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Who was I to spoil it? Snow falls. Earth says: Here's a gift for you. And what do we do? We shovel it. Blow it. Scrape it. Plow it. Get it out of our way. We push it to our fringes. Is there anything uglier or sadder than a ten-day-old snow dump? It's not even snow anymore. It's slush. — Jerry Spinelli

It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. My mom says some days are like that. — Judith Viorst

My father never cheated on my mother. He used to cheat on me. He used to pick other kids after school. Take them to the zoo. Take them to play ball. One day he came to me. He says, Look I got to level with you. I met another kid. — Dom Irrera

Dorothy's coming up. I think she's tight."
"That's great." I picked up my bathrobe. "I was afraid I was going to have to get some sleep."
She was bending over looking for her slippers. "Don't be such an old fluff. You can sleep all day." She found her slippers and stood up in them. "Is she really as afraid of her mother as she says?"
"If she's got any sense. Mimi's poison."
Nora screwed up her dark eyes at me and asked slowly: "What are you holding out on me?"
"Oh, dear," I said, " I was hoping I wouldn't have to tell you. Dorothy is really my daughter. I didn't know what I was doing, Nora. It was spring in Venice and I was so young and there was a moon over the ... "
"Be funny. Don't you want something to eat? — Dashiell Hammett

You're mother says you've never passed a mirror ou didn't like. It's true, in a way. It's not that you're vain; you're concerned. Mirrors are opportunities. They're random checkpoints throughout the day. — Adam Gallari

Heroes are people who face down their fears. It is that simple. A child afraid of the dark who one day blows out the candle; a women terrified of the pain of childbirth who says, 'It is time to become a mother'. Heroism does not always live on the battlefield. — David Gemmell

One Saturday morning walking to the farmers' market with my lover she tells me she needs to look like a man on the street. She hates binding her breasts. Hates having breasts, hates not passing. I press her. I ask her, but what do you feel like when you're naked in bed with me? Do you like your body then? She is quiet. Later she tells me she had a dream. Her mother brought home a bottle of medicine from the hospital for her. The doctor says she has to take it. The medicine is testosterone.

On Shabbat I remember to pray for enough space inside of me to hold all the darkness of the night and all the sunlight of the day. I pray for enough space for transformations as miraculous as the shift from day to night.

Later when that lover has changed his name and an ex-boyfriend has come out to me as a lesbian I go to visit my best friend's sister-turned-brother-turned-sister-again and she tells me about the blessing of having many names and using them all at once. — M.J. Kaufman

FMr. Oswald places the telescope on the desk in front of us. "This," he says proudly, "Is a Broadhurst. It was the most powerful telescope for backyard veiwing in its day."
Which was when?" Lizzy asks.
The nineteen thirties," he replies. "Isn't it a beauty? On a clear night, you could see the whole entire solar system with this one."
Unable to stop myself, I blurt out, "My very energetic mother just served us nine pizzas."
Lizzy gawks at me like I have two heads. "He's lost it; he's finally lost it. I knew this day would come."
Mr. Ozwald chuckles. "Jeremy has just given us a mnemonic device for remembering the order of the planets. — Wendy Mass

Her biggest fault - perplexing to this day - is that Mother loves to pick trash. "Its an adventure", she says. "You never know what surprises you'll find — Camron Wright

In addition to Linda and me, there's a brother, a strange little guy named Bradley, obsessed with his own cowboy boots. He paces areound and around the house, staring at his feet and humming the G. I. Joe song from the television commmercial. He is the ringleader of a neighborhood gang of tiny boys, four-year olds, who throw dirt and beat each other with sticks all day long. In the evenings he comes to dinner with an imaginnary friend named Charcoal.
'Charcoal really needs a bath', my mother says, spooning Spaghettios onto his plate. His hands are perfectly clean right up to the wrists and the center of his face is cleared so we can see what he looks like. The rest of him is dirt. — Jo Ann Beard

In my day, when you called on a girl, her mother was always hollering down to see if she was still unraped, the maid would look in, her father would shuffle his feet in another room. Today the boy calls up, says, 'Meet you at the back door of Stern's.' — Frank Crowninshield

Soy milk and two sugars." Just this past week, Rachel had become convinced that how people took their coffee gave some secret insight into their characters. Were people who took their coffee black unyielding? Did people who liked their coffee with milk and no sugar have mother issues? She had a notebook behind the coffee counter in which she wrote her findings. Willa decided to keep her on her toes by making up a different request every day.
Rachel walked back to the coffee bar to write that down in her notebook. "Hmm, interesting," she said seriously, as if it made all the sense in the world, as if she'd finally figured Willa out.
"You don't believe in ghosts, but you do believe that how I take my coffee says something about my personality?"
"That's superstition. This is science. — Sarah Addison Allen

I still have my bad days when I think I'm not getting everything I deserve. But those pass quickly once my Mother gets on the phone and says, 'listen, we used to eat rocks and walk 80 miles a day to school. — Bonnie Hunt

The Peace Panda Says ... Every day should be Earth Day!If we don't take care of mother earth,
She won't take care of us! — Timothy Pina

- A mother, a real mother with a little child, thinks day and night about the welfare of the little one in her arms. A mother knows what dangers the child will have to encounter as he grows up. She does not let the father reassure her when he makes light of things and says that the children have to find their own way.
A mother worries, for she carries the burden, and she often sees much deeper than the father just where the child is in danger. — Johann Christoph Blumhardt

Standing alone at the railing is Four. Though he's not an initiate anymore, most of the Dauntless use this day to come together with their families. Either his family doesn't like to come together, or he wasn't originally a Dauntless. Which faction could he have come from? "There's one of my instructors." I lean closer to say. "He's kind of intimidating." "He's handsome," she says. I find myself nodding without thinking. She laughs and lifts her arm from my shoulders. I want to steer her away from him, but just as I'm about to suggest that we go somewhere else, he looks over his shoulder. His eyes widen at the sight of my mother. She offers him her hand. "Hello. My name is Natalie," she says. "I'm Beatrice's mother." I have never seen my mother shake hands with someone. Four eases his hand into hers, looking stiff, and shakes it twice. The gesture looks unnatural for both of them. No, Four was not originally Dauntless if he doesn't shake hands easily. — Veronica Roth

As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be. — James Joyce

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

The other day my twelve-year-old says to me, I don't feel like I'm with you right now. You're in the car with me, you're checking your e-mail, you're not listening to me, I don't feel like I'm with you. And I say, You know what? That was your mother's gripe, too. And she was right. And you're also correct. When you cop to something, you get to the next level. In this case, the next level is: I just learned something from my twelve-year-old. — Bob Saget

My mother is very religious. She's one of those old ladies that spends her life in the church. She just prays and prays, day and night. We have a very different idea of what religion is. She doesn't understand what my work is about, why I want to make changes in the way we live. She thinks we should be thankful for the little we have and leave well enough alone. I suppose she thinks that if she prays enough, God will come down from the sky with a plate of beans for her to eat.
But I don't think that God say, 'Go to church and pray all day and everything will be fine.' No. For me God says, 'Go out and make the changes that need to be made, and I'll be there to help you.' [p. 30] — Elvia Alvarado