My Other Mother Quotes & Sayings

My view of addiction, whether it's drugs, food, alcohol or any list of other things, is the same reason I asked my mother why I wasn't a drug addict or alcoholic, which is because when you're not loved, often people become an addict and self destructive. Now the opposite of love is indifference and even worse is rejection and abuse, and I meet those people. — Bernie Siegel

A lot of people feel like they're victims in life, and they'll often point to past events, perhaps growing up with an abusive parent or in a dysfunctional family. Most psychologists believe that about 85 percent of families are dysfunctional, so all of a sudden you're not so unique. My parents were alcoholics. My dad abused me. My mother divorced him when I was six ... I mean, that's almost everybody's story in some form or not. The real question is, what are you going to do now? What do you choose now? Because you can either keep focusing on that, or you can focus on what you want. And when people start focusing on what they want, what they don't want falls away, and what they want expands, and the other part disappears. (Jack Canfield) — Rhonda Byrne

When I write, it feels like there are two little creatures that sit on each of my shoulders. One whispers, "You can do this. You've got what it takes." The other sounds like my mother-in-law. — Carla H. Krueger

On Mother's Day: It's just a rip-off, to tell the truth, a chance to sell my perfume and other things that ladies like. — Elizabeth Taylor

That night, she told me the old story again about the woman who had been left behind on a desert island by the man she loved. She waited for him to return for many years, surviving on seaweed and sand, until at last she grew so small she could fit herself inside a bottle and roll into the sea. Who found the bottle, I wondered, but my mother said no one knew what happened to it or where the woman had wanted to go. A fish could have swallowed the bottle, she said, or it could have been dashed against rocks. Other possibilities: sharks, mermaids, lonely sailors at sea. — Jenny Offill

When other girls had tea parties on the playground, I brought out my secondhand Ouija board and attempted to raise the dead. While my classmates gave book reports on The Wind In The Willows or Charlotte's Web, I did mine on tattered, paperback copies of Stephen King novels that I'd borrowed from my grandmother. Instead of Sweet Valley High, I read books about zombies and vampires. Eventually, my third grade teacher called my mother in to discuss her growing concerns over my behavior, and my mom nodded blithely, but failed to see what the problem was. When Mrs. Johnson handed her my recent book report on Pet Sematary,, my mom wrinkled her forehead with concern and disapproval. "Oh, I see,"she said disappointingly, as she turned to me. "You spelled 'cemetery' wrong." Then I explained that Stephen King had spelled it that way on purpose, and she nodded, saying, "Ah. Well, good enough for me. — Jenny Lawson

I could go on all night, Lake. I could go on and on and on about all the reasons I'm in love with you. And you know what? Some of them are the things that life has thrown our way. I do love you because you're the only other person I know who understands my situation. I do love you because both of us know what it's like to lose your mom and your dad. I do love you because you're raising your little brother, just like I am. I love you because of what you went through with your mother.
I love you because of what we went through with your mother. I love the way you love Kel. I love the way you love Caulder. And I love the way I love Kel. So I'm not about to apologize for loving all these things about you, no matter the reasons or the circumstances behind them. And no, I don't need days, or weeks, or months to think about why I love you. It's an easy answer for me. I love you because of you. Because of every single thing about you. — Colleen Hoover

From books, I winnowed the glue that held together my psyche as it struggled to stay whole. It was from stories and myths that I learned to dream, to imagine a different life, to realize potentials and probabilities other than those of the painful, poverty-mired existence I found myself in as a child. With a book I could hide in a corner, safe from the heavy hand and belt of my stepfather, and for a while not worry about where our next meal would come from, or where we would be sleeping that night, or when my mother would break and have to be sent yet again to the mental institution. Books, for me, we tiny life rafts that I clung to desperately. — J. Don Cook

Keep everybody out your business, that's how you do it. And I mean everybody. It ain't about having a relationship outside of the house. It's about having a relationship within each other. When something go down don't be calling your sister or your mother; I'm not gonna be calling my brother or uncles. We're gonna work it out. — Ice Cube

The other day I found her passport in her drawer when I was putting away my dad's laundered handkerchiefs. I wish I hadn't. For the purpose of my story, she should have it with her. I sat on my dad's bed and flipped through page after empty page. No stamps. No exotic locales. No travel-worn smudges or creases. Just the ID information and my mother's black-and-white photo which if it were used in a psychology textbook on the meaning of facial expressions would be labelled: Obscenely, heartbreakingly hopeful. — Miriam Toews

No, I can't stop for sonnets; my mother is sitting up. I'll look you up tomorrow, sometime or other, and do for goodness' sake try and realise that you're a pestilential scourge, or your find yourself in a most awful fix. Good-night! — Kenneth Grahame

Kingsley Amis was a lenient father. His paternal style, in the early years, can best be described as amiably minimalist - in other words, my mother did it all. — Martin Amis

My mother had a fear of doctors - other than her daughter marrying one. — Shelley Berkley

I'm just a normal mother with the same struggles as any other mother who's trying to do everything at once and trying to be a wife and maintain a relationship. There's absolutely nothing perfect about my life, but I just try hard. — Gwyneth Paltrow

I don't think I could ever live with either a man or a woman for a long time. Male and female are attractive to my mind, but when it comes to the sexual act I am afraid. In every situation I need a lot of stimulation before I am conquered by the forces of passion and lust. But confusion, before and after, is the dominant factor.
I dreamed many times about a mature man with experience who would have the vigour of a boy but an adult's polished methods. Strangely enough, I also dreamed about women of my mother's age who were ideal lovers. These dreams came superimposed on one another. Sometimes the masculine element was dominant, sometimes the feminine one. At other times I wasn't sure. I saw a female body with male organs or a male body with female ones. These pictures, blended together in my mind, occasionally brought pleasure but more often pain. — Adam Thirlwell

My mom was there to answer the unanswerable, to make sense of the fault in our life - and we got through that somehow; we came out on the other side. Now I'm 0 for 2 and I don't get any more pitches to swing at. — Daisy Whitney

I didn't know yet how wanting to die could be a bloodsong in your body that lives with you your whole life. I didn't know then how deeply my mother's song had swum into my sister and into me. I didn't know that something like wanting to die could take form in one daughter as the ability to quietly surrender, and in the other as the ability to drive into death head-on. I didn't know we were our mother's daughters after all. — Lidia Yuknavitch

I'm missing my baby's first swim lesson. If I am at my daughter's debut in her school musical, I am missing Sandra Oh's last scene ever being filmed at Grey's Anatomy. If I am succeeding at one, I am inevitably failing at the other. That is the trade-off. That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous. Something is always lost. Something is always missing. And yet. I want my daughters to see me and know me as a woman who works. I want that example set for them. — Shonda Rhimes

I had a parakeet that used to fly around the house and crash into these huge mirrors my mother put in. Ever heard of this interior design principle, that a mirror makes it seem like you have an entire other room? What kind of jerk walks up to a mirror and goes, Hey look, there's a whole other room in there. There's a guy that looks just like me in there. — Jerry Seinfeld

My whole family is in the arts some way or the other. My father was a cellist in a symphony outside Chicago that was a side-job, he was a scientist. My mother was a dancer in New York. She was next-door neighbors with Dorothy Loudon and they moved to New York together. Mom was a dancer in New York for several years before she got married. My sister was a classical pianist. And my brother was a partier. So it all just seemed to work. — Jason Graae

My parents deeply and truly loved each other, and if my mother hadn't died they would have been together forever. They were together for as much of forever as was given to them. They really loved my brother and me and were very good to us. It gave the model of how to have a happy marriage and family, but it also set the bar very high. — Andrew Solomon

How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Coraline.
"I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave."
"Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline.
"Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back. — Neil Gaiman

Come on, let's go meet the guy who thinks he's my better half . And dear God, I apologize ahead of time if he starts talking to you about how many eight-point bucks he's planning to hunt this weekend. — J. Lynn

Although I don't use it nearly so much anymore, I've decided, five years down the line, that Mr. Treadstone's verdict on 'kind of' was kind of unjust. Obviously, this phrase can be redundant or reductive, or just plain stupid in some sentences, but not in all sentences. I wouldn't, for example, use a sentence like 'Antarctica is kind of cold', or 'Hitler was kind of evil'. But sometimes, things aren't black and white. And sometimes 'kind of' expresses this better than any other phrase. For example, when I tell you that my mother was kind of peculiar, I can think of no better way of putting this. — Gavin Extence

Between Sylvia and me there existed as between my own mother and me - a sort of psychic osmosis which, at times, was very wonderful and comforting; at other times an unwelcome invasion of privacy (words from Aurelia Plath from the Introduction) — Sylvia Plath

Life was brutal for her. She hated the heat and the dust - the lack of friendship and lack of respect from other women
who knew she was a Christian. She hated the monster my father had become. — Brian Arthur Levene

My goodness," my mother said, reading the label. "It's a tenderloin." "I just got it in," Randy said. "It's corn-fed, and it's got real good marbling. I know everybody's always talking about grass-fed beef, but if you ask me it's shoe leather. Give me a cow that's been shoved into a pen with a thousand other cows and forced to eat grain, and I'll show you a darn good pot roast. — Janet Evanovich

I remember when I was writing my memoir and I was worried about what other people would think when they read it, and my mother, who can be this incredibly wise person, said that it really didn't matter because strangers who read it would never meet me anyway, and people I knew were aware of my secrets. — Katy Lederer

My mother and I are in the worst fight we've ever had, one that tests the concept of unconditional love, not to mention basic human decency. And the thing is, no one is right exactly. We both followed our hearts and had no choice but to hurt each other deeply. — Lena Dunham

As much as I transferred my mother to Elizabeth Shore of The Black Dahlia, as much as her dad mutated into an obsession with crime in general, well, I have thought about other things throughout the years. — James Ellroy

Did you see Grace is back with us?"
Megan did see me. She saw me jump off a cliff and crawl under an Iranian fence. Megan has seen plenty. And I can't help but hold my breath, waiting on her answer.
"Hi," Megan says, turning to me. "Welcome home."
Home. The word hits me. I've spent all my life thinking that I didn't have one, but now that I'm back I can't deny that I've spent more my life on Embassy Row than in any other place-that maybe it just wasn't my mother's childhood home. In a way, it's mine, too. — Ally Carter

Each person is made of five different elements, she told me.
Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always critized for his cigarette habit and who always shouted back that she should feel guilty that he didn't let my mother speak her mind.
Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people's ideas, unable to stand on your own. This was like my Auntie An-mei.
Too much water and you flowed in too many different directions. like myself. — Amy Tan

My mother has said that it's often better for a husband and wife not to understand each other too well," he [Rupert] said. "A little mystery keeps a marriage more interesting, she says. — Loretta Chase

Ellysetta Baristani is my shei'tani." His eyes found hers. "My truemate." A murmur of voices rippled through the crowd.
"Please tell the court what a truemate is."
"A truemate is the person who holds the other half of a Fey's soul." His gaze never left hers, and Ellie felt the magic of his voice wrapping her in imperceptible weaves of longing. "It is the most sacred bond known to any Fey, more sacred than that between a king and his subjects, more sacred even than that between a mother and a child. — C.L. Wilson

I was the youngest in my family. When the other kids went to school, my mother would make them breakfast and then she would go back to bed for an hour, so I was sort of babysat by television. — Paula Poundstone

In truth, I am a single mother. But I don't feel alone at all in parenting my daughter. Krishna has a whole other side of her family who loves her, too. And so Krishna is parented by me, but also by her grandmother and aunts and cousins and uncles and friends. — Padma Lakshmi

When I was growing up my mother used to tell me that the best gift parents could give their children was to have a strong and loving relationship with each other. — George Howe Colt

That waitress was flirting with me," Dad announced once we were out of the restaurant. He said it in his "whispering voice," which meant it was still loud enough for the waitress, all of her coworkers, and the shoppers at every other store in the mall to overhear.
"Ew," I said. "She was not."
Dad chuckled with delight over how hot and eligible he imagined himself to be. "She kept coming over to 'try to collect my plate' ... "
"Because that is her job," I reminded him.
"And the way she looked at your mother? Pure jealousy!" Dad slipped his arm around Mom's waist. "Poor thing. I left her a big tip. — Leila Sales

When you spend weeks on end close to another person, so close that you know every hiccough, every smell and every scratch on the skin, you either come out of it hating each other or so deep in each other's gut that you can't find a way out. Klara and I were both. Our little love affair had turned into a Siamese-twin relationship. There wasn't any romance in it. There wasn't room enough between us for romance to occur. And yet I knew every inch of Klara, every pore, and every thought, far better than I'd known my own mother. And in the same way: from the womb out. I was surrounded by Klara — Frederik Pohl

I was a complete brat but was an angel with my mother. I used to be perfectly behaved, and my mother used to be like ... 'Really, are you badly behaved with other people?' I was like, 'No, not at all.' But the minute she used to leave the room, I was a brat. — Kajol

I was very young, and so I know," my mother said. "I know what can happen." "We're not you," Anabel said. "That's what everyone thinks," my mother said. "They think they're not like other people. But then life teaches you some lessons. — Jonathan Franzen

My mother folded each pair of trousers over her arm, pulling the legs out so that the creases lay perfectly. She handles clothes meticulously. S did Nai-nai. But there was a difference in attitude. To my grandmother, clothes held a kind of magic--they could change your destiny one way or the other. To my mother, they were servile, like farm animals in China. Treat them well and they'll perform their function. — Patricia Chao

When one person got involved, it took everybody else along. I went to jail first, but my entire family soon joined the Movement. One time, Faith & I ended up at home w all the babies from 2 households, because the mamas & the other older sisters were in jail. In the morning we had to plait everybody's hair & feed them--it was a mess! We had all the babies except Peaches Gaines, who was in jail with her mother & my mother. Peaches was jailed because she had not obeyed an officer. She was about 2. Her bond was set at, I believe, $125.00. --Joann Christian Mants — Faith S. Holsaert

My favourite thing is when my mother goes in the other to go and to talk to the phone, I use that moment for wisdom. — Deyth Banger

To put it simply, my mother worried. She worried about our neighbors' reactions. Would they break me with their disparaging glances, their cruel intolerance? She worried I was just like every other teenage girl, all tender heart and fragile ego. She worried I was more myth and figment than flesh and blood. She worried about my calcium levels, my protein levels, even my reading levels. She worried she couldn't protect me from all of the things that had hurt her: loss and fear, pain and love. Most especially from love. — Leslye Walton

When I was a kid and the other kids were home watching "Leave it to Beaver," my father and step-mother were marching me off to the library. — Oprah Winfrey

Well, I'm Italian, but my family isn't stereotypical. I mean, I only have one sister and we don't yell or throw pasta at each other. My mother doesn't even have a secret spaghetti sauce recipe. — Jennifer Esposito

This is a little awkward," I said, "but my mother just ran over the rabbit."
"Ran over?"
"As in roadkill. We're not sure what to do about it."
"Where are you?"
"Giovichinni's, buying lunch meat."
"And the rabbit?"
"Gone. He was with two other guys. They scooped him up off the road and drove away with him."
There was a long silence on the phone. "I'm fucking speechless," Morelli finally said. — Janet Evanovich

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

Is anyone saying same-sex couples can't love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too? — Rick Santorum

The fact is, the man who'd begotten me didn't want me. In his eyes I should never have been born. And perhaps that would've been best. As it was, my existence had proven to be nothing more than a nuisance for everyone. I angered my father, brought strife upon my mother, irritated my teachers, and annoyed the other children who were forced to interact with me in school. All by simply being.
When you aren't loved, you aren't real. Life is cold, like the stone against my palm. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I never thought to ascribe my mother's emotional and physical exhaustion to the lack of a husband and father; rather, I ascribed it to my existence. In other words, I grew up learning the exact opposite of what Eisenhower was taught. I learned that if I didn't exist, the family would be better off. I grew up believing that if I had never been born, things would be easier for the people I loved. (page 35) — Donald Miller

What should we do?, I asked, and I had a pained feeling I thought was the beginning of love.
In those early months we clung to each other with a rather silly desperation, because, in spite of everything my mother or Mrs Jordan could say, there was nothing that really prevented us from seeing each other. With imagined tragedy hovering over us, we became inseparable, two halves creating the whole: yin and yang. I was victim to his hero. I was always in danger and he was always rescuing me. I would fall and he would lift me up. It was exhilarating and draining. The emotional effect of saving and being saved was addicting to both of us. And that, as much as anything we ever did in bed, was how we made love to each other: conjoined where my weaknesses needed protection. — Amy Tan

As for myself, I look upon all women as my Mother. This is a very pure attitude of mind. There is no risk or danger in it. To look upon a woman as one's sister is also not bad. But the other attitudes are very difficult and dangerous. It is almost impossible to keep to the purity of the ideal. — Ramakrishna

My mother always said 'Don't bother other people.' I think that's good advice. — Amy Sedaris

Besides, who would think of marrying a mothball? A question my mother put to me often, later, in other forms. — Margaret Atwood

More than any other personality trait, my mother seemed to be ruled by anger and sadness. She seemed to hate being a mother. Watching her unhappiness as I grew up made me conclude that the answer was to try and be as unemotional as I could, which many therapists have taught me is a bad idea. It also made me want to avoid marriage and having children. — Merrill Markoe

Seventh bearer of the cursed name Akiva." Here he paused, speculative. "No Misbegotten ever bore that name to manhood before you. Did you know that? Old Byon the steward, he gave it out of spite. Wanted your mother to beg him not to. Any other woman in the harem would have, but not Festival. 'Scribble whatever you like on your list, old man,' she told him. 'My son will not be tangled in your feeble fates.' — Laini Taylor

My mother knows how to hit a nerve. And the pain I feel is worse than any other kind of misery. Because what she does always comes as a shock, exactly like an electric jolt, that grounds itself perfectly in my memory. — Amy Tan

I spent a restless night plagued with excruciating dreams of Adam sucking me off in front of Matt, Jay and my mother. Matt and Jay weren't paying much attention, being too busy excavating each other's tonsils with their tongues, but Mum was staring with folded arms and narrowed eyes, occasionally muttering, Oh, for heaven's sake, Timothy - show a little enthusiasm! — J.L. Merrow

My mother was a restorer, she repaired broken things. I don't do that. I destroy things. I cannot go the straight line. I must destroy, rebuild, destroy again. My rhythm is not the same. My mother moved in a straight line: I go from one extreme to the other. — Louise Bourgeois

From Time for College - Mr. Chiardi & Other Stories

It was time for Junior to go to college. He'd sprouted pubic hair and was eyeing all the girls.
"I want to go to college," he said.
"Yes," I replied, "It's time."
His mother, my wife, was resigned to the fact that it was time for Junior to leave the nest. She sat on a stool at the granite kitchen counter, spiked coffee beside her, reading The New York Times. She looked almost real. — Rita Buckley Aka Charles Maxwell

Not just one day, you will live many days," the doctor would answer, "you will live months and years, too." "But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dears, why do we quarrel, boast before each other, remember each other's offenses? Let us go to the garden, let us walk and play and love and praise and kiss each other, and bless our life." "He's not long for this world, your son," the doctor said to mother as she saw him to the porch, "from sickness he is falling into madness." The — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Thank you, Caleb said, and hugged me once more. Part of me wanted to stay in Caleb's arms, because he'd always had this grounding effect on me. Caleb was my rational side. He was more than that; other than my mother, he was the first person I'd ever truly loved.
Caleb would always be my best friend. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

My parents loved each other. I was raised in a house of total love and respect. My dad worked very hard and my mother was incredibly devoted to him. I can unequivocally, without any peradventure of doubt, tell you that I was raised with the kind of love that we only dream of. — James Woods

I have a great relationship with my mother-in-law. We're both Leos, we understand each other. — Tori Amos

My mother used to say not sleeping was the sign of a guilty mind. It could have been. There was a lot in my mind to feel guilty about. When you're drunk and trying to sleep, your thoughts are visited by the ghosts of those deeds whose heat still glows hottest in your personal darkness. Our actions burn much longer than the moments in which they occur. And drunks like me, we hide from the glow of the embers by fueling other fires and hiding within the flames. — Robert E. Dunn

I smiled back, the importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them, or, in other words, sometimes politeness is all that stands between oneself and madness. — Nicole Krauss

How can you just leave me standing? Alone in a world that's so cold? (So cold) Maybe I'm just too demanding, Maybe I'm just like my father too bold.Maybe you're just like my mother She's never satisfied (She's never satisfied) Why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like when doves cry. — Prince

I recall the scent of some kind of toilet powder - I believe she stole it from her mother's Spanish maid - a sweetish, lowly, musky perfume. It mingled with her own biscuity odor, and my senses were suddenly filled to the brim; a sudden commotion in a nearby bush prevented them from overflowing - and as we drew away from each other, and with aching veins attended to what was probably a prowling cat, there came from the
house her mother's voice calling her, with a rising frantic note - and Dr. Cooper ponderously limped out into the garden. But that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since - until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another. — Vladimir Nabokov

my story is that more than sex or death or the remote possibility of God, there was one thing more fundamental to my way of being in the world than any other, and that was the all-pervading influence of a mother; and not just her influence, but her presence and her love. — Michael Harding

Goats did have names for themselves, she well knew: there was 'goat who is my kid,' 'goat who is my mother,' 'goat who is herd leader,' and half a dozen other names not least of which was 'goat who is this goat. — Terry Pratchett

I'd learned from my mother that when someone gives you a subjective compliment - meaning one that can't be disproven and is based on opinion - but that you find to be completely false, rather than argue, it's much better to just say thank you, or I appreciate that and strive to be that compliment. Fools fight compliments, she'd said, and sometimes other people see you better than you can see yourself. — Penny Reid

My only other choice was to rejoin my mother and listen to fascinating facts about every eligible man passing by. (Apparently, Mr. Egbert collects gentleman's bootlaces! The wonder of it all.) — Kelly Zekas

The difference between most mothers and me is that I didn't sit around drinking coffee at baby group for 12 months after the birth of my baby. No, in three weeks I was back in my suit, back at my desk earning profit for my business and I don't see why other women shouldn't do the same. — Katie Hopkins

By the spring of 1963, Las Vegas was made up of an odd convergence of gamblers, gangsters, and government. All three forces, intentionally or unintentionally, catered to every kind of human weakness. Although the aboveground nuclear blasts were gone, the town was still full of glitzy, beckoning casinos; flamboyant, roguish celebrities; down-and-out and entrepreneurial prostitutes; and notorious, brutal criminals. By now it had gained its much deserved reputation as "Sin City" - universally considered a town where "just about anything goes." And surrounding it were the infamous "holes in the desert." Many of Las Vegas's problems were known to be buried in those same holes.
So, naturally, as a woman who relished audacity, this would be the place to which my mother would move my sister and me. As it turned out, that was the other part of her telephone call's "exciting news. — Gary Spetz

I've always been taught to care what other people think. My grandmother and mother taught me to project a positive image of myself. — Lamar Odom

I am sorry I have wasted (and still waste) so much time; I am sorry to be as agonizingly shy at eighty as I was at twenty; I am sorry that I speak no languages but my mother tongue and that I have not traveled or experienced other cultures as widely as I should have done. — Oliver Sacks

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.'
'John Lennon,' I say with a sigh. 'My mother is a huge fan.'
'So then you must know that every day, in every way, it's getting better. — Jamie Kain

They were soul mates, my mother and father. They claimed to adore each other, as if the word 'adore' meant 'argue with ceaselessly. — Merrill Markoe

At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first 'feeling' for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

I missed my one true friend, my mother. She and I were close in a way I don't think many other mothers and daughters were. I slept beside her every night of my childhood: so near to her back, I could probably sketch the constellation of moles and freckles on her skin there. When I was a very little girl, every morning I would wake before her and arrange myself so that when she woke, we were eye-to-eye. I miss her, with a never-ending ache that I did not think was possible, that crowds out any other feeling and certainly all reason, and any good sense. — Kaitlyn Greenidge

Janine Hathaway offered to be my guardian, " said Lissa suddenly.
"Janine Hathaway?" Tatiana's eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline. "I'm sure she has other commitments. No, we've got much better choices."
A better choice than Janine Hathaway? Not likely. Before Dimitri, my mother had been the gold standard by which I measured all badassedness. — Richelle Mead

I seem to wish to have some importance
In the play of time. If not,
Then sad was my mother's pain, my breath, my bones,
My web of nerves, my wondering brain,
to be shaped and quickened with such anticipation
Only to feed the swamp of space.
What is deep, as love is deep, I'll have
Deeply. What is good, as love is good,
I'll have well. Then if time and space
Have any purpose, I shall belong to it.
If not, if all is a pretty fiction
To distract the cherubim and seraphim
Who so continually do cry, the least
I can do is to fill the curled shell of the world
With human deep-sea sound, and hold it to
The ear of God, until he has appetite
To taste our salt sorrow on his lips.
And so you see it might be better to die.
Though, on the other hand, I admit it might
Be immensely foolish. — Christopher Fry

You're the one with the family tree that doesn't branch." She illustrated said tree with her fingers. "How many Egyptian gods slept with their brothers' and sisters' wife's mother's uncle's dogs? Hmm? I ask you?" He wasn't quite sure if he should be offended or amused by her attack on his family. Honestly, he had no real feelings for any of them other than hatred and disdain but ... "Have you visited your pantheon lately?" "We're not talking about my pantheon, here. Are we? No. We're insulting yours."
-Lydia and Seth- — Sherrilyn Kenyon

My goal is to be a household name, and when I do that, I want to help other girls become models, and maybe even launch a fashion line with my mom, like Beyonce did with her mother. My mom has such a good eye, and it's always been a dream of hers. — Chanel Iman

I wanted to earn a living wage and to see something nice about me in the 'New York Times.' I wanted my mother to be proud. I wanted all the things you want and also feel silly for wanting. I wanted readers to say they'd enjoyed something of mine - to see my photo in magazines where I'd seen photos of other writers. — David Lipsky

I will go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea.
I will go down to her, I and none other,
Close with her, kiss her, and mix her with me.
Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast;
O fair white mother, in days long passed
Born without sister, born without brother,
Set free my soul as thy soul is free. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

My mother would take groups of students to different countries and always brought us along, so by the time I was 10, I had been to Russia, China, Nicaragua and several other countries. — Eliza Dushku

I remembered how, as a boy, I would stew over all the things Mama wouldn't do, things other mothers did. Hold my hand when we walked. Sit me up on her lap, read bedtime stories, kiss my face good night. Those things were true enough. But, all those years, I'd been blind to a greater truth, which lay unacknowledged and unappreciated, buried deep beneath my grievances. It was this: that my mother would never leave me. — Khaled Hosseini

I'd never been in love, never felt that surge of feeling or that fall from its graces. I'd only watched as others weathered it: my mother in her garden, Sumner on the front lawn all those years ago, Ashley sobbing from the other side of a wall. I sat kerbside with my best friend and held her, trying to shoulder some of the hurt. There's only so much you can do, in these situations. — Sarah Dessen

Now that Dad was gone I was starting to see how mortality was bound up in things like that cold, arc-lit sky. How the world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might see them. Once, twice. Perhaps never again. The albums on my mother's shelves are full of family photographs. But also other things. A starling with a crooked beak. A day of hoarfrost and smoke. A cherry tree thick with blossom. Thunderclouds, lightning strikes, comets and eclipses: celestial events terrifying in their blind distances but reassuring you, too, that the world is for ever, though you are only a blink in its course. — Helen Macdonald

The opening line of her last column was: You know you really don't fit in with the other housewives you meet when the only way you can contribute to a discussion about babies is by saying, "Yes, that's what my mother used to do." It went on to talk about how a woman could climb Everest, teach schoolchildren in Cambodia and win the Booker Prize but some people would still think she had good news only when she produced progeny. — Shweta Ganesh Kumar

When I was 11 or 12, I was really bored with everything on my summer reading list. It was all happy, middle-grade kinds of books. I was getting frustrated, because I liked to read. My mother went to the library and got me a copy of 'The Other Side of Midnight' by Sidney Sheldon. It was my first adult book. — Lauren DeStefano

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

I wish I could balance life as an artist and a mother, but sometimes when I am doing live concerts, I have to ask people to help me in my other role. — Namie Amuro

I couldn't have been a novelist without being a mother. It gives you a unique witness point of the growth of a personality. It was a kind of biological component for me that had to come first. My children gave this other window on the world. — Carol Shields

Dig deep, deep, my soul, to find the heart
the blood, the heat, the shrine and resting place. Dig deep, deep into the moist soil all the way to where they lie, those I love
she, Mother, with her dark hair loose and gone, her bones long since tumbled in the back of the vault, as other coffins came to rest in her spot, but in this dream I range them round me to hold as if she were there ... — Anne Rice

You ain't old yet but when you get old, all the women in the village start to look down on you when they find out you want to do something other than sweep the kitchen or cut up vegetables. Had this big starch mango tree when I was small. Anytime I set myself to climb it, there was always a woman passing by to yell at me and tell me to get down. Asked me why I leaving my poor mother to do all the housework. I never got to the top. It was like God was always watching, ready to send another hag to tell me down. Then, one day, they cut down the tree. — Kevin Jared Hosein

I was darkly convinced that at age 52 I would kill myself because my mother committed suicide at that age. I was fantasizing that she was waiting for me on the other side of the grave. — Spalding Gray