My Mother Doesn't Love Me Quotes & Sayings

That's what a good daughter is supposed to do--love her mother even if her mother doesn't love her back." Things Unsaid, from Chapter One, "Family Matters — Diana Y. Paul

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

Nothing in the world was more important than my daughter's happiness, even though I'd never understood why she always had to choose the most difficult and painful of paths. But a mother doesn't have to understand anything, she simply has to love and protect. And feel proud. Knowing that we could give her almost everything, she nevertheless set off early in search of her independence. She'd had her stumbles and her failures, but she insisted on facing any storms alone. — Paulo Coelho

And maybe love is terrifying. I'm terrified now, but not in the way she would think.
I'm terrified because I hate who she is and what she's done, I do, and yet there is still something strong and powerful between us, some kind of deep, primal bond that won't end, won't snap or break or change, it just remains there inside me, as sold and factual as my blood and bones - she is my mother, I am her daughter - and I don't know what to call it because it doesn't feel like love, not the good kind I felt for Ellie, with all my heart, but instead an instinctual pull that's been there from the beginning, drawing me back to her again and again, the woman who has hurt me like no one else ever could, and now she's dying and the bond is still here, inside me, and I won't call it love or hate because emotions has nothing to do with the fact that she is my mother and I am her daughter, and we will be connected in that way forever. — Laura Wiess

There are occasions that I love to be fashionable and enjoy, you know? But the work day of a mother doesn't include a hair making team or any consideration of your shoe. — Sarah Jessica Parker

I held the Host with two fingers and thought: How small Jesus made Himself, in order to show us that He doesn't expect great things of us, but rather little things with great love. — Mother Teresa

We need to realize that poverty doesn't only consist of being hungry for bread, but rather it is a tremendous hunger for human dignity. We need to love and to be someone for someone else — Mother Teresa

Soon after they went back, Jules said to Jim: 'I love Magda. But it's a habit; it's not a great Love, not the real thing. To me, she's like a young mother and an attentive daughter, both at once.' 'But that's fine!' 'It's not the love I've always dreamed of having.' 'Does that kind of love exist?' said Jim. 'Of course! My love for Lucie.' Jim checked himself from saying, 'Because you do not possess her.' 'Besides,' Jules went on, 'knowing myself as I do, I shall never be able to forgive any woman for loving me. To love me is a sign of perversion or compromise -- and Lucie doesn't suffer from either. There's not a particle of me that she accepts.' 'With her, any man could think that.' 'Yes, could...' said Jules 'But I do.' 'Oh well,' said Jim, 'it's heroic and one can't help respecting it. It's a bit like martyrdom. And it's the key to your Life. If Lucie loved you...' 'She wouldn't be Lucie.' said Jules. — Henri-Pierre Roche

So Dad was cured?" I don't know why I feel so disappointed. I didn't even remember him; he died of cancer when I was one.
"He was." A muscle twitches in my mom's jaw. "But there were times I felt ... There were times it seemed as though he could still feel it, just for a second. Maybe I only imagined it. It doesn't matter. I loved him anyway. He was very good to me."
reminds me that she is not just my mother, but a woman who has fought her whole life for something she has never truly experienced.
My dad was cured. And you can't love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.
It makes me ache for her, a feeling I hate and am somehow ashamed of. — Lauren Oliver

How can she stand up there so tall as she's telling us how her mother beat her and her father molested her when she was a little girl? How is it possible for her to look so proud? How is she not being consumed by shame? She should be disintegrating before our eyes. She should be struck by lightning, and God's big, angry, booming voice should be shaking the room with "How dare you? I told you never to tell." But that's not her God, she says. Her God is loving and kind and wants what's best for her. Her God loves peace and serenity and forgiveness. Her God doesn't make her keep secrets. I thought I knew God all my life, but maybe it was some other guy the whole time. I want this God. I want Val's God. I want a God who doesn't make me jump through hoops and hate myself to earn his love. — Amy Reed

My husband doesn't listen because his mother didn't make him listen. What am I going to do, beat him? I mean: firstborn of a southern family? Firstborn boy? Please. I mean, I love him to death, but is he going to take the garbage out? No. — Carol Bartz

If he even survives." She shivered, and Amon put his arm around her, drawing her into his steady warmth.
"It's that bad?"
Raisa nodded. "He looked ... he looked awful, Amon. Willo doesn't know if he'll ... She's worried about him. My mother died, and I never got to tell her that I loved her, that I finally understood - just a little anyway. If Han dies too, I don't know what I'll do. — Cinda Williams Chima

Family comes in many shapes and forms. It's a single mom that happily gives up the things she wants or needs in order to provide that extra special something for her child. It's the single father that's trying to be a mother and father to his kids. It's the parents that were never able to have children of their own and adopt a child. Family doesn't show prejudice based on race, age or sex. Family isn't only defined by blood; it's defined by love. Something that Lily and I have in leaps and bounds. Family's what we make it, what we want it to be. — Jennifer Miller

I have learned that the love a mother has for her child is unique among human emotions. Every mother knows this insticntively, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need articulating. — Lisa Scottoline

I trace his face with my fingers, 'Let me see. A guy tells me that he would have thrown himself in front of a train if it wasn't for me and then drives seven hours straight, without whingeing once, on a wild-goose chase in search of my mother with absolutely no clue where to start. He is, in all probability, going to get court-martialled because of me, has put up with my moodiness all day long, and knows exactly what to order me for breakfast. It doesn't get any more romantic than that, Jonah. — Melina Marchetta

My mother isn't famous. She doesn't have an incredible career. She isn't even married to the love of her life. But there's one thing she's always been . . . Right. — Colleen Hoover

Belle, girl, you can't find real adventures that way. You have to go out into the world... you have to meet people..."
"You don't," she protested.
"I did when I was younger," he said gently. "That's how I met your mother. True love doesn't just fall into your lap. You have to go out and find your other half."
"But your... my... she fell out of your lap. She just kept going. — Liz Braswell

Those who jump out of airplanes do not love life - they deny it, which, of course, is not done without a certain naughty exhilaration. Like children they relish tugging on the apron of Mother Nature, as long as she doesn't turn and slap them. — Anthony Marais

He's kind with me."
"But not with everyone." This wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact.
"No, not with everyone. But if you knew -"
"And you've fallen in love with a person who doesn't feel it's necessary to be kind to anyone else but you?"
I pressed my lips together and swallowed. She didn't sound judgmental or even upset. She sounded curious. It was always this way with my mother. Her curiosity was why she won every argument, and why people always listened to her and took her advice.
She was exceedingly reasonable. She was never malicious or pushy, never condescending or irritated. She was only curious. She'd poke holes in terrible proposals and theories with her curious questions until it was clear to everyone that the proposal or theory was garbage. But she'd never, ever come out and say it.
I'd learned that the best defense against curiosity is honestly. — Penny Reid

If you make a choice that doesn't please your mate, your friends, your mother, or whoever, the world will not fall apart - the people who truly love you want you to love yourself. — Oprah Winfrey

I don't understand this--when people love you so much they are willing to get rid of you. I think if I loved someone that much I'd want to stay with them. It doesn't make sense that love would make a mother leave, and I wonder when this mother will love me that much too. I get the idea that love might be something to both desire and fear, and maybe if we don't love each other too much I won't have to go away again. I wonder why love works for everyone else, but it doesn't work for me. — Soojung Jo

He (son Jason) doesn't see me as a (gay) icon, he sees me as his mother who touches his hair too much. No, I love being an icon to anybody. Equal rights, you know? — Barbra Streisand

Sometimes," I ventured, "it doesn't occur to boys that their mother was ever young and pretty ... I couldn't stand it if you boys were inconsiderate, or thought of her as if she were just somebody who looked after you. You see I was very much in love with your mother once, and I know there's nobody like her ... — Willa Cather

It is so beautiful to be loved as Laurie loves me; he isn't sentimental, doesn't say much about it, but I see and feel it in all he says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble that I don't seem to be the same girl I was. I never knew how good and generous and tender he was till now, for he lets me read his heart, and I find it full of noble hopes and impulses and purposes, and am so proud to know it's mine. He says he feels as if he 'could make a prosperous voyage now with me aboard as mate, and lots of love for ballast.' I pray he may, and try to be all he believes me, for I love my gallant captain with all my heart and soul and might, and never will desert him while God lets us be together. Oh, Mother, I never knew how much like heaven this world could be when two people love and live for one another! — Louisa May Alcott

Mama?"
"Yes, Emmy."
She traced a rivulet of rain with her finger as it made its journey down the glass. "How do you know when it's been long enough?"
Emmy could sense her mother smiling into the phone. "When you relaize that love doesn't have a time span. Only pain does. I think sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the two, so we just hold on to both of them like they're inseparable. — Karen White

M. I've never really thought of M objectively before, as another person. She's always been my mother I've hated or been ashamed of. Yet of all the lame ducks I've met or heard of, she's the lamest. I've never given her enough sympathy. I haven't given her this last year (since I left home) one half of the consideration I've given the beastly creature upstairs just this last week. I feel that I could overwhelm her with love now. Because I haven't felt so sorry for her for years. I've always excused myself - I've said, I'm kind and tolerant with everyone else, she's the one person I can't be like that with, and there has to be an exception to the general rule. So it doesn't matter. But of course that's wrong. She's the last person that should be an exception to the general rule.

Minny and I have so often despised D for putting up with her. We ought to go down on
our knees to him. — John Fowles

Just when it seemed my mother couldn't bear
one more needle, one more insane orange pill,
my sister, in silence, stood at the end
of the bed and slowly rubbed her feet,
which were scratchy with hard, yellow skin,
and dirt cramped beneath the broken nails,
which changed nothing in time except
the way my mother was lost in it for a while
as if with a kind of relief that doesn't relieve.
And then, with her eyes closed, my mother said
the one or two words the living have for gratefulness,
which is a kind of forgetting, with a sense
of what it means to be alive long enough
to love someone. Thank you, she said. As for me,
I didn't care how her voice suddenly seemed low
and kind, or what failures and triumphs
of the body and spirit brought her to that point
just that it sounded like hope, stupid hope. — Jason Shinder

My mother is quiet. The way he acts, she thinks it must mean he doesn't love her as much as she loves him — Carole Glickfeld

I don't know, Jondalar. Maybe you haven't found the right woman. Maybe the Mother has someone special for you. She doesn't make many like you. You are really more than most women could bear. If all your love were concentrated on one, it could overwhelm her, if she wasn't one to whom the Mother gave equal gifts. — Jean M. Auel

I'll take care of my mother," he said grimly. "I love her, but she doesn't run my life."
"Yeah, that's what we all say. You. Me. Lucy." She stabbed the stick into the dirt. "These are powerful women. They're sane, they're smart, they rule their worlds, and they love us ferociously. A potent combination that makes it touch to pretend they're normal mothers. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Well, Ma, see ... there's this girl."
Silence.
He checked to make sure the call hadn't been dropped. "You still there, Ma?"
A sniffle.
"You can't be crying already," he said. "I haven't told you anything about her yet."
"It doesn't matter, Nick," his mother said through her tears. "Those are the three words I've been waiting thirty-four years to hear. — Julie James

When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; an abusive father doesn't return the innocent open love of his young child. But grief is the ultimate unrequieted love. However hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels ... — Rosamund Lupton

You cannot kill me here. Bring your soldiers, your death, your disease, your collapsed economy because it doesn't matter, I have nothing left to lose and you cannot kill me here. Bring the tears of orphans and the wails of a mother's loss, bring your God damn air force and Jesus on a cross, bring your hate and bitterness and long working hours, bring your empty wallets and love long since gone but you cannot kill me here. Bring your sneers, your snide remarks and friendships never felt, your letters never sent, your kisses never kissed, cigarettes smoked to the bone and cancer killing fears but you cannot kill me here. For I may fall and I may fail but I will stand again each time and you will find no satisfaction. Because you cannot kill me here. — Iain S. Thomas

Life doesn't give You the people you want, It gives you The people you need: To love you, To hate you, To make you, To break you, And to make you the person you Were meant to be. — Walt Whitman

I can't stand stage mothers. It doesn't work. You definitely feel that with the new generation of pop stars right now they've all managed to work it out for themselves. You have to have confidence in that. When you're young, you know your market better than I will. I love having young people on the show because I can learn from them. — Simon Cowell

My mother is a very strange woman ... She doesn't understand me in the least and doesn't love me much either. If she had either love or understanding she would be prepared to make sacrifices. — Egon Schiele

But this time, so far as I can tell, my mother has not made her husband her desire incarnate, though she does love him very much. And for his part, so far as I can tell, he doesn't try to talk her out of her self-deprecation, nor does he abet it. He simply loves her. I am learning from him. — Maggie Nelson

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

You can pray while you work. Work doesn't stop prayer and prayer doesn't stop work. It requires only that small raising of the mind to him: I love you God, I trust you, I believe in you, I need you now. Small things like that. They are wonderful prayers. — Mother Teresa

What difference does it make?" he says. "People can think whatever they like. I don't desire their validation."
"So you don't mind," I ask him, "that people judge you so harshly?"
"I have no one to impress," he says. "No one who cares about what happens to me. I'm not in the business of making friends, love. My job is to lead an army, and it's the only thing I'm good at. No one," he says, "would be proud of the things I've accomplished. My mother doesn't even know me anymore. My father thinks I'm weak and pathetic. My soldiers want me dead. The world is going to hell. And the conversations I have with you are the longest I've ever had. — Tahereh Mafi

If you killl yourself, Comorra, it will wreck him. Utterly. Believe me on this one. So there you go - there's another casualty of war. And sure, in the grand scheme of things, whoop-dee-doo, who gives a crap about some dude's broken heart. But what about the not-so-grand scheme? Doesn't love count for something? Do you think all this ... this carnage would have happened if the Romans hadn't taken Prasutagus away from your mother? If she hadn't been so blinded by grief maybe she would have found a way to work things out with the governor instead of goading him to war." Clare shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe two people alone in the darkness can't generate enough light to drive it back. But maybe they can be a beacon for others. A candle in the window at midnight, you know? I mean, they can at least be there for each other, right? — Lesley Livingston

No, Lucy. Your mother doesn't really love men. They are a symptom of her obsessive quest of finding somebody who will make her whole. She doesn't understand that she has to make herself whole. — Patricia Cornwell

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

I realized that there is no shortage of the love a mother has to offer her children. There is a never-ending supply of love, pride, and affection, and each child will no doubt receive his equal share. Thankfully, it's just the way we are built. There is, however, something that each child doesn't get the same amount of, and that is called attention. — Jill Smokler

When a mother takes pictures of her children on the beach, she doesn't take herself for an artist; she does it for love, which is an excellent reason, from my point of view. — Martin Parr

We do this thing. We open our hearts to the world around us. And the more we do that, the more we allow ourselves to love, the more we are bound to find ourselves one day - like Dave, and Morley, and Sam, and Stephanie - standing in the kitchen of our live, surrounded by the ones we love, and feeling empty, and alone, and sad, and lost for words, because one of our loved ones, who should be there, is missing. Mother or father, brother or sister, wife or husband, or a dog or cat. It doesn't really matter. After a while, each death feels like all the deaths, and you stand there like eveyone else has stood there before you, while the big wind of sadness blows around and through you.
"He was a great dog," said Dave.
"Yes," said Morley. "He was a great dog. — Stuart McLean

Only common mortals like the Somervilles have good old rotten hates, dear,' said her mother. 'Sir Graham manages to love everybody and wouldn't know what you're talking about. Have a bun.'

'He doesn't love the Turks,' said Philippa. 'He kills them.'

'That isn't hate,' said Kate Somerville. 'That's simply hoeing among one's principles to keep them healthy and neat. I'm sure he would tell you he bears them no personal grudge; and they think they're going to Paradise anyway, so it does everyone good. — Dorothy Dunnett

Did I ever tell you what came between your mother's heart and mine?"
"I don't think this is the time
"
"Your friend would disagree," she said, almost playfully, her attention darting to Tybalt. Focusing in me again, she said, "He all but burns with what he doesn't say to you, and my time is mine to spend. — Seanan McGuire

I don't care what people think ... I learned a long time ago ... I was 19 and had a very traumatic experience ... .and I learned that I have to go to bed with myself at night and that I have to please myself ... and as long as I don't go out of my way to offend anybody that I love, upset my mother or my husband ... I'll do my own thing. And if the public doesn't like it, it's their problem, not mine. — Iris Apfel

It's okay to kiss people when you love them."
"I don't love your mother," I tell her. "Not like that, anyway."
"You give her all your french fries, even when she won't give you back onion rings," Sophie says. "And when you say her name it sounds different."
"How?"
Sophie thinks. "Like it's covered in blankets."
"I do not say your mother's name like it's covered in blankets. And I don't always give her my french fries, because you're right, she doesn't share."
"But you still don't yell at her when she's not being fair," Sophie points out. "Because you don't want to hurt her feelings." She slips her hand into mine and repeats, "You love her. — Jodi Picoult

Oh, Kathleen!" sighed Nancy as the two went into the kitchen together. "Isn't mother the most interesting 'scolder' you ever listened to? I love to hear her do it, especially when somebody else is getting it. When it's I, I grow smaller and smaller, curling myself up like a little worm. Then when she has finished I squirm to the door and wriggle out. Other mothers say: 'If you don't, I shall tell your father!' 'Do as I tell you, and ask no questions.' 'I never heard of such behavior in my life!' 'Haven't you any sense of propriety?' 'If this happens again I shall have to do something desperate.' 'Leave the room at once,' and so on; but mother sets you to thinking."
"Mother doesn't really scold," Kathleen objected.
"No, but she shows you how wrong you are, just the same ... — Kate Douglas Wiggin

As she spoke, I wanted to cry, because sometimes it's just so damn hard to be a mother. We have to wait and wait and wait for our children to open their hearts to us. And if that doesn't work, we have to bide our time and look for the moment of weakness when we can sneak back into their lives and they will see us and remember us for the people who love them unconditionally. — Lisa See

I'm crying for the little girl whose mother divorced her father, the girl who wanted to fall in love for the first time but wasn't ready for sex, the girl who dated a boy just because he wasn't the first one, the girl who fell hard for the guy with the easy smile and the green eyes, the girl who needed to prove she could hook up on a class trip, the girl who rand for student council just to impress a guy, the girl who lost her best friend, the girl whose father doesn't care anymore, the girl who doesn't have the money for college, the girl who just wants her grandma to fix everything, the girl who doesn't talk to anyone about anything, the girl who just can't fall in love again - even if a sweet guy folds a thousand paper cranes. Just for her. — Sydney Salter

And in her [Eleanor Roosevelt] letters, she writes the most, you know, fanciful letters: when we are together, and when we are reunited, and you know, I will be your surrogate wife. Of course she doesn't use that word, but I will be the mother to my brothers, and I will be your primary love. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

What doesn't kill you leaves disfiguring scars
What doesn't kill you fills you with paralyzing self-hatred
What doesn't kill you makes you an unfit mother
What doesn't kill you makes it all so hard
What doesn't kill you wakes you up in the middle of the night
What doesn't kill you turns you into an alcoholic
What doesn't kill you makes you do unforgivable things to the people you love
What doesn't kill you makes you afraid for the rest of your life
What doesn't kill you might make you kill them — Clementine Von Radics

It doesn't matter if a child comes to you or through you. That love is still the same. You are still a mother. — Kym Whitley

There are no different categories of love. There isn't one kind of love between a mother and child, another between lovers, and another between friends. The love that is real is the love that lies at the heart of all relationships. That is the love of God and it doesn't change with form or circumstance. — Marianne Williamson

Three years passed. Three years without a mother. In three years my grief has grown to enormous proportions.
Grief is now a giant, sad whale that I drag along with me wherever I go.
My grief fills rooms. It takes up space and it sucks out the air. It leaves no room for anyone else.
Grief and I are left alone a lot. We smoke cigarettes and we cry.
Grief holds my hand as I walk down the sidewalk, and grief doesn't mind when I cry because it's raining and I cannot find a taxi.
Grief acts like a jealous friend, reminding me that no one else will ever love me as much as it does.
Grief whispers in my ear that no one understands me.
Grief is possessive and doesn't let me go anywhere without it.
Grief is force and I am swept up in it. — Claire Bidwell Smith

When someone you love truly dies, you have to find them over and over again in the world, and I think you do that on a very psychic, unconscious level, and I think in some ways I was calling out to that spirit of my mother when I saw the fox. It doesn't surprise me it's in animals that I find my mother. — Cheryl Strayed

Smile at each other. Smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other- it doesn't matter who it is- and that will help to grow up in greater love for each other. — Mother Teresa