Talking To Mother Quotes & Sayings

My grandfather was a member of Parliament for 40 years. Obviously we're talking here South Africa, a whites only parliament. I grew up in a family that was very involved with the legal battles against apartheid - the great treason trials in the 1950s and early '60s, and later with the legal resources center that my mother founded. My father was involved with a number of very prominent cases that had political aspects to them, whether it was the inquest into the Sharpeville Massacre, the death of Steve Biko, or one of the trials of Nelson Mandela. — William Kentridge

A lot of people think this is a goodie two-shoes talking. But we do have a tendency to complain rather than celebrating who we are. I learned at my mother's knee it's better to appreciate what's happening ... I think we kind of talk ourselves into the negative sometimes. — Betty White

Whoa," Becky said, because the baby kicked her hard in the bladder.

Felix startled, backing up and nearly falling over a chair.

"Sorry, I was whoa-ing because right when you came in, the baby kicked, not because you're Felix Callahan. Oh, you know what it reminded me of ? When Elisabeth's baby kicks just as Mary greets her? Isn't that funny? As if I had some spiritual sign when I saw you."

Annette smiled, her eyebrows raised. Felix glared handsomely. Becky stamped down a desire to squirm.

"No, it's not terribly funny," Felix said, "particularly as I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Elisabeth, wife of Zacharias, cousin to Mary, mother of Jesus? No? Nothing?"

Felix looked at her with a careful lack of amusement.

"Oh, maybe you don't have the Bible in England. See, there's this guy named Jesus and his mother is named Mary, and well, it's a really interesting read if you don't mind parables. — Shannon Hale

People say that rape is not sex, that it's violence," Lucy says, bitterly. "But it's also sex. You can't get around that," she says. "he didn't run me over with a car. He had sex with me. You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to have sex with an eighth-grader. You're not supposed to have sex when you're in eighth grade. It was very intimate. You can't get around it. This part of the body," she says, gesturing from her heart to her lower abdomen, though I understand she means to indicate her vagina. "If you're sitting around with a group of women, talking about various traumas, someone will say, I got beaten by my mother. But if you say, I got raped, it's a different thing."
I wonder if that is true. Is rape really the worst sort of violation? I'm not sure. I often wonder why it matters whether we're penetrated or not. There is the pain, but the pain doesn't last. The shame does. (216) — Jessica Stern

On the other hand, Protestantism's shedding away of authority, as evidenced by my mother's proclamation that I needn't go to church or listen to a preacher to achieve salvation, inspires self-reliance - along with a dangerous disregard for expertise. So the impulse that leads to democracy can also be the downside of democracy - namely, a suspicion of people who know what they are talking about. It's why in U.S. presidential elections the American people will elect a wisecracking good ol'boy who's fun in a malt shop instead of a serious thinker who actually knows some of the pompous, brainy stuff that might actually get fewer people laid off or killed. — Sarah Vowell

My mother used to say about gossipers
" Don't worry about people talking about you , whilst they're talking about you they are leaving some other poor innocent soul alone — Lou Silluzio

Barack Obama is putting his team together to take over the Administration. So far, he's got his mother-in-law, who is going to be living with him, and they are talking about Hillary for Secretary of State. You have your mother-in-law and Hillary Clinton. Sounds like smooth sailing to me. — David Letterman

There are ten in a circle and everyone wants to speak and no one cares what the other person presently speaking is talking about. Someone starts crying about having been molested as a child; someone starts crying about a dead mother; someone wants to go to Las Vegas. You slip out the side door and into your car. It is five-thirty in the morning and the sky is the color of a three-day-old bruise. It is beautiful. — Patrick DeWitt

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds) of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera, my

mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera) — E. E. Cummings

We women, me and you. Tell me something real. Don't just say I'm grown and ought to know. I don't. I'm fifty and I don't know nothing. What about it? Do I stay with him? I want to, I think. I want ... well, I didn't always ... now I want. I want some fat in this life."
"Wake up. Fat or lean, you got just one. This is it."
"You don't know either, do you?"
"I know enough to know how to behave."
"Is that it? Is that all it is?"
"Is that all what is?"
"Oh shoot! Where the grown people? Is it us?"
"Oh, Mama." Alice Manfred blurted it out and then covered her mouth.
Violet had the same thought: Mama. Mama? Is this where you got to and couldn't do it no more? The place of shade without trees where you know you are not and never again will be loved by anybody who can choose to do it? Where everything is over but the talking?
- Violet Trace and Alice Manfred — Toni Morrison

My mother made sweet tea for him. He seemed a good conversationalist, but perhaps not a good listener, because at times he appeared to be engaged in a monologue with himself. In the midst of the conversation, my father gave me five Somali shillings, an amount equivalent to one U.S dollar. I was so excited to have paper money that I left immediately to go to a neighborhood store to buy cold soda and candy. My father was still talking and laughing when I returned to the house. I watched him closely, studying his every move. I wondered if had come to visit me or to consume large quantities of tea. — Hassan Abukar

And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

I wish I had another chance to write that school composition, 'What I Did Last Summer.' When I wrote it in fifth grade, I was scared and just recorded: 'It was interesting. It was nice. My summer was fun.' I snuck through with a B grade. But I still wondered, How do you really do that? Now it is obvious. You tell the truth and you depict it in detail: 'My mother dyed her hair red and polished her toenails silver. I was mad for Parcheesi and running the sprinkler catching beetles in a mason jar and feeding them grass. My father sat at the kitchen table a lot staring straight ahead, never talking, a Budweiser in his hand. — Natalie Goldberg

A couple of years ago, I read the findings of a study on the effects of divorced and separated parents talking negatively about their exes in the presence of their children. What I remember about the study most vividly is really just one thing: that it's devastating for a child to hear one parent speak ill of the other. In fact, so much so that the researchers found it was less psychologically damaging if a parent said directly to the child "You are a worthless piece of shit" than it was for a parent to say "Your mother/father is a worthless piece of shit."
I don't remember if they had any theories about why that was so, but it made sense to me. I think we all have something sturdier inside of us that rears up when we're being attacked that we simply can't call upon when someone we love is being attacked, especially if that someone is our parent, half of us-the primal other- and the person doing the attacking is the other half, the other primal other. — Cheryl Strayed

When the second hour of Fiji's open house was almost at an end, a mother from Davy said, "How on earth do you get it to look like the cat is talking?" "Oh, did it look realistic?" Fiji had to struggle to keep a smile on her face. "It was so cute! It said, 'Get off my tail or I'll smother you in your sleep.'" "Just some batteries and a CD!" Fiji said. "And isn't that just what a cat should say? — Charlaine Harris

I was really young, just playing with puppets a lot and doing all the voices and acting it out - normal kid stuff. But then I'd hear my mother talking about it to her relatives, marveling at it as if it was something unique. And it made me realize, 'Oh, maybe I do have a talent for something.' — Steve Buscemi

I am not going to apologize for the idyllic childhood and the wonderful siblings and the Christian home I grew up in. I know how blessed I am and I am thankful, but I also know it's not that way for everyone. I was talking to a young woman recently who was going through her something and she said, "I don't have sisters to watch my back like you do. I didn't have the kind of mother you did." And I said to her what I've begun saying to people across the country, "Then why not let the legacy of love and support start with you? — Robin Roberts

Gwen knew that Martin had once been captured by federal agents. She didn't know that when he referred to being interrogated by the best, he was talking about his mother. — Scott Meyer

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

It was a toss-up which was more pointless: Arguing with an algorithm or talking back to his mother. — Ramez Naam

The child comes home and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be, hasn't got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It's not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. I am merely pointing to something which is different from love but which sometimes goes by the name of love. It may well be that without this thing which I am talking about there would not be any love. But this thing in itself is not love. It is just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man. It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation. When you got born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a hame trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can. — Robert Penn Warren

My parents were just constantly affirming me in everything that I did. Late at night, I'd wake up and hear my mother talking over my bed, saying, 'You're going to do great on this test. You can do anything you want.' — Stephen Covey

Mom used to say that the thoughts in our heads were nothing more than electrical impulses. I remember Dad and her talking about this over dinner. It frustrated Dad that the human brain can fire electrical sparks and think, but that the electricity he'd pump into an android brain would never give it independent thought. The body isn't that different from a machine. Humans and androids both run on electricity.
That lightning spark of energy I saw in the reverie.
That was my mother's last thought, an echo of electricity, something that sparked when I entered her dreamscape.
That spark is gone now. Her life is gone now. Everything that made her, her, is gone now. Faded into nothing. — Beth Revis

This is new to us, you know? Your mother's sorry. She's sorry that she hurt your feelings, and she wants you to invite your girlfriend over for dinner."
"So that she can make her feel bad and weird?"
"Well she is kind of weird, isn't she?"
Park didn't have the energy to be angry. He sighed and let his head fall back on the chair.
His dad kept talking. "Isn't that why you like her? — Rainbow Rowell

Rachel became slowly aware now, even while talking and listening to her own voice, that there might well be something universal about the pleasure a grown girl could take in disparaging her mother. — Richard Yates

As to my mouth, of all my features, I wish I could possess my mouth again, just as it had been before the fire. I had my mother's lips, generous below and above; and what kissing I had practiced, mainly on my hand or on a lonely pig, had convinced me that my lips would be the source of my good fortune. I would kiss with them, and lie with them, I would make victims and willing slaves of anyone my eyes desired, simply by talking a little, and following the talk with kisses, and the kisses with demands. And they'd melt into compliance, everyone of them, happy to perform the most demeaning acts as long as I was there to reward them with a long, tongue-tied kiss when they were done. But the fire didn't spare my lips; it took them too, erasing them utterly. — Clive Barker

Suddenly I remembered something Daddy told me once when I was angry at my mother. "You know how Mom arranges orange slices on a plate for your soccer team and has activities planned for your birthday parties two months in advance?" he'd asked me. "That's the way she shows her love, Gracie." Why was I thinking about that now? I could hear his voice so clearly, like he was talking to me from the backseat of the car. That's the way she shows her love, Gracie. — Diane Chamberlain

Those are pretty. Did he leave you your dignity after he cut you up?"
"Asshole." Shelby didn't flinch. There was no pity in his voice, just the familiar shit talk. "You got a lot of room to talk. Looks like someone tried to cut your dick off but missed."
"Good thing too or I wouldn't be able to make your mother scream every night. — Mercy Celeste

Oh, Daniel," his mother exclaimed, catching him before he could make his escape, "do come join us. We're trying to decide if Honoria should be married in lavender-blue or blue-lavender."
He opened his mouth to ask the difference, then decided against it. "Blue-lavender," he said firmly, not having a clue as to what he was talking about.
"Do you think so?" his mother responded, frowning. "I really think lavender-blue would be better."
The obvious question would have been why she'd asked his opinion in the first place, but once again, he decided that the wise man did not make such queries. — Julia Quinn

We have a solemn pact.' Kaye nodded to Mother and looked over at Em talking to some neighbors. 'If one of us is unconscious in the hospital, the others will make sure it's pulled.'
'The plug?' Ruth asked.
'The chin hair,' said Kaye, eyeing Ruth with some alarm. 'You're off the visitors list. Mother, make a note. — Louise Penny

I think it's still difficult to write about motherhood and anxiety, that talking about not wanting to be a mother or feeling ambivalent about motherhood makes people uneasy. The ambivalent mother is certainly much more interesting. — Laurie Foos

An accident of brain development stacked the deck against children: the mother had three or four years to fuck with your head before your hippocampus began recording lasting memories. You'd been talking to your mom since you were one year old and listening to her for even longer, but you couldn't remember a single word of what you or she had said before your hippocampus kicked into gear. Your — Jonathan Franzen

It is hard to recognize, or even to describe, but I think this freedom is the real reason the book continues to be so well loved and so well read after all these years. I am talking about the freedom that comes from choosing to remain open, as my mother did, to life itself, whatever it may bring: joys, sorrows, triumphs, failures, suffering, comfort, and certainly, always, change. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Sometimes when Anna is talking to Louise she sees words coming out of her mouth like fistfuls of stones. But she doesn't intend to spew stones; it's simply the only way Anna knows how to takl to her mother. — Jessica Anya Blau

I think I have always wanted to tell stories. My mother was the real catalyst. I kept talking about it and so she pulled out a story I wrote (and illustrated) back in elementary school. She used that as proof that I should be writing and had been doing so unconsciously for years. — Kim Smith

Charles Wallace looked troubled. I don't think it's that. It's being able to understand a sort of language, like sometimes if I concentrate very hard I can understand the wind talking with the trees. You tell me, you see, sort of inad - inadvertently. That's a good word, isn't it? I got Mother to look it up in the dictionary for me this morning. I really must learn to read, except I'm afraid it will make it awfully hard for me in school next year if I already know things. I think it will be better if people go on thinking I'm not very bright. They won't hate me quite so much. — Madeleine L'Engle

The relationship I have with my mother now, and photographing her in front of the grave, it opens up discussions, and dealings with the conversations with my mother about, when I was little, how we lived and about suicide and talking about it, so it's something positive, it brought us more together, because people might never discuss that. Some families never go near certain subjects because it's too hurtful or too close or too dangerous. But within doing these photographs, I also wanted to open up a conversation with her about certain things about life. — Jurgen Teller

I am completely turning into my mom. Me, trying to be stern, is her. Or when I make silly voices. My mom always uses weird voices if she's talking to a kid or a dog. I'm the same person - completely my mother. — Eve

And all the sweet talking of your mother?" "I want you two to get along. You need to get along," Friedrich said. Cinderella peered up at him. "Why?" He hesitated, and his adorable expression of shy uncertainty almost made her laugh. "You're going to marry me, right?" "You haven't asked." "I'll get to that in a minute. I have it all planned, and it will knock your shoes off - again. So yes, you and mother must get along, — K.M. Shea

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

Boring. Total downer. Again - you have to remember the audience. This isn't some anti-abortion group. You've got to dig deeper. Remember who you're talking to." "Governor, I can guarantee you these people are anti-abortion." "You don't know that." I did know that, and so did he. "They're celebrating traditional motherhood, they're independent Baptists, and they're from Florence." Now it would become an argument about something else. He'd get impatient and say, "Never mind, I'll think of something," and walk into the event. It didn't matter what he said. At the Mother of the Year ceremony, middle-aged women cackled and cooed at anything the governor — Barton Swaim

Libby wasn't a big talker - Michelle and Debby seemed to hog all her words. She made pronouncements: I like ponies. I hate spaghetti. I hate you. Like her mother, she had no poker face. No poker mood. It was all right there. When she wasn't angry or sad, she just didn't say much. — Gillian Flynn

Sarah will talk to me about someone and I don't know who she's talking about, but if she talks to my mother, the two of them will know exactly - and across several generations, too. — Prince Andrew

[God] sees before Him in fact a self-centred, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human animal. But He says "Let us pretend that this is not a mere creature, but our Son. It is like Christ in so far as it is a Man, for He became Man. Let us pretend that it is also like Him in Spirit. Let us treat it as if it were what in fact it is not. Let us pretend in order to make the pretence into a reality." God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one. I daresay this idea of a divine makebelieve sounds rather strange at first. But, is it so strange really? Is not that how the higher thing always raises the lower? A mother teaches her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long before it really does. — C.S. Lewis

You have to take care of freedom. Can't be afraid of it, like Fromm said, like MacLeish said. Can't be too scared or too bold. Like a plant, you had to water it and weed it and keep it safe from frosts. And we lost it, somehow. We let the wrong ideas do the talking. We liked the easy short-term too much, and couldn't commit to the difficult long-term. We even stopped breeding, toward the end there, didn't we? Our birth rate went below replacement level. America was worth exploiting, but it wasn't worth leaving for anyone else, anyone who came after. Maybe evolution just shook its head and let us clear ourselves off the map. Mother Nature doesn't think much of life that isn't willing to replicate. — Algor X. Dennison

On a crowded bus in Israel, a mother was speaking to her son in Yiddish. An Israeli woman reprimanded her. "You should be speaking Hebrew. Why are you talking to him in Yiddish?" The mother answered, "I don't want he should forget he's a Jew." — Kirk Douglas

I missed you but I knew you were in the best place for you. I would have been a terrible mother. I had no patience. Maya, when you were about two years old, you asked me for something. I was busy talking, so you hit my hand, and I slapped you off the porch without thinking. It didn't mean I didn't love you; it just meant I wasn't ready to be a mother. I'm explaining to you, not apologizing. We would have all been sorry had I kept you. — Maya Angelou

If I wanted to punish myself, I'd keep looking at your face."
"Isn't my face in half the pictures taped to your bunk wall?"
"Maybe I keep them there to scare away the devil."
"Just show him your feet," he said, going for her weak spot. She had adorable toes, but she hated that her second one was longer than the first. "He'll run screaming back to hell with his forked tail between his legs."
"Keep talking and I'll send you there to meet him."
"I'll say hello to your demon-spawn mother while I'm there."
"Try not to wet yourself like you did at the palace."
"Hey!" He drew back an inch. That was hitting below the belt. "I was only four when that happened, and your mom was legitimately scary. — Melissa Landers

There is not much you can say about a baby unless you are talking with its father or another mother or nurse; infants are not part of the realm of ordinary language, talk is inadequate to them as they are inadequate to talk. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Mom is talking to Jack. "I hear you're interested in zoo animals."
I snort. There's a sentence you don't hear too often. I fake an insulted sigh.
"Well, thank-you, Mother. Yes, I'm hungry, but you don't have to be so honest about it. Your tact is amazing. — Erynn Mangum

Enough!", Henry bellowed. His mother's mouth snapped shut. " You're talking about the woman I love! I don't give a shit about what you think. Claire is an amazing mother and she loves her son. I love her son. They are everything to me and nothing you say is going to change that! You can take your high and mighty talk and shove it up your ass!", Henry snapped. — Andria Large

Acting is our job, not talking about it. In France, they know me like I belong to their family. I go somewhere and I feel like I'm sometimes the aunt, the grandmother, the mother, the sister. They all know me. But it's not supposed to be that way. — Carole Bouquet

My father's mother, my Grandmother Young, was said by the family to have talked herself to death. Convalescing from a fever, she had defied the doctors and gone right on talking. — Stark Young

I'll take another stab at talking to her."
"If you can't find a way, get Cooper to do it. You know how he loves controlling things. I'm sure he'll want to help."
"True, but once he starts meddling, he won't stop. I don't need him giving me pointers for the rest of my relationship with Lark."
"Lark," my mother said, testing out the name. "She had such a sweet smile. I could look at that smile for the rest of my life. Yes, go kick fate in the balls and get me a daughter."
"You have a daughter."
"A new one, I meant. Preferably one who likes to visit more than Anna."
Grinning at the thought of my alpha chick sister, I finished my juice and stood up. "I'll focus on a first date then worry about getting you a more compliant daughter. — Bijou Hunter

Mother Goose chuckled to herself. "Jack is nimble, Jack is quick - but Jack can be such a - " She stopped herself from finishing the thought, perhaps remembering she was talking to thirteen-year-olds. "I think I've had enough bubbly for one night. It's time for bed anyway. — Chris Colfer

My mother taught me to be polite to dragons. Particularly polite, I mean; she taught me to be ordinary polite to everyone ... but dragons are a special case. -Daystar (Talking to Dragons) — Patricia C. Wrede

We should all know this: that listening is not talking; [it] is the gifted and great role and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective, and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one. — Brenda Ueland

Tadas was sent to the principal today," announced Jonas at dinner. He wedged a huge piece of sausage into his small mouth.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because he talked about hell," sputtered Jonas, juice from the plump sausage dribbling down his chin.
"Jonas, don't speak with your mouth full. Take smaller pieces," scolded Mother.
"Sorry," said Jonas with his moth stuffed. "It's good." He finished chewing. I took a bite of sausage. It was warm and the skin was deliciously salty.
"Tadas told one of the girls that hell is the worst place ever and there's no escape for all eternity."
"Now why would Tadas be talking of hell?" asked Papa, reaching for the vegetables.
"Because his father told him that if Stalin comes to Lithuania, we'll all end up there. — Ruta Sepetys

I'm talking to you more than I speak with my mahmen."
"I thought your mother was dead."
"She is."
"You have a very low standard for communication. — J.R. Ward

I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn.
Baby, drink milk.
Baby, play ball.
And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief. — Amy Hempel

GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws
riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public
knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong.
ROS: And talking to himself.
GUIL: And talking to himself. — Tom Stoppard

A figure in Los Angeles politics for five decades, my mother nevertheless had had her fill of talking to people by the time she came home at night. — Janet Fitch

Lately I've been going to all these high schools talking to the students, answering their questions, listening to what they have to say. It has been an incredible journey to be around them and try to give them what my mother gave me. — Jill Scott

If my kids were to make a talking doll of me as a mother, one of my recorded phrases would be 'I will throw that in the trash.' 'If you don't put that down right now, I will throw that in the trash.' It's very funny to hear myself say certain things - like noticing which phrases become the most popular to use. — Justine Bateman

I am all the time talking about you, and bragging, to one person or another. I am like the Ancient Mariner, who had a tale in his heart he must unfold to all. I am always buttonholing somebody and saying, "Someday you must meet my mother." — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I'm close to my mother, and I could sit talking on the phone with her all day. — Missy Elliot

I thought that I was going to be like this earth mother. When people would complain about being pregnant, I was like, 'What are you talking about? It's incredible! Just enjoy it.' — Gwen Stefani

The thought of my mother talking to me about sex makes me want to stab my eyes out with a fork, gouge even deeper and scramble my brains to prevent the conversation from ever happening. — Addison Moore

One who has just learnt a foreign language, constantly resorts, while talking, to words belonging to that language in order to make a show of his or her achievement. But one who knows the language well, seldom uses it when speaking in his or her own mother tongue. Such is the case with those who are well advanced in religion. — Abhijit Naskar

This explains so much," she said, clucking her tongue in mother-hen fashion. "You're compensating for this withered appendage."
Withered appendage? What the devil was she talking about? He shook his head, trying to clear it. Colin's dire predictions of shriveled twigs and dried currants rattled in his skull. Wide awake now, he fought to sit up, wrestling the sheets.
"Listen, you. I don't know what sort of liberties you've taken while I was insensible, or just what your spinster imagination prepared you to see. But I'll have you know, that water was damned cold."
She blinked at him. "I'm referring to your leg."
"Oh." His leg. That withered appendage — Tessa Dare

The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst you are actually travelling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own father or mother. — Douglas Adams

On this Very Street in Belgrade
Your mother carried you
Out of the smoking ruins of a building
And set you down on this sidewalk
Like a doll bundled in burnt rags,
Where you now stood years later
Talking to a homeless dog,
Half-hidden behind a parked car,
His eyes brimming with hope
As he inched forward, ready for the worst. — Charles Simic

You gotta make your own fun. That's right, listen to that mother of two, she knows what I'm talking about. — Dave Attell

You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'. — Terry Pratchett

The African powers, child. The spirits. The loas. The orishas. The oldest ancestors. You will hear people from Haiti and Cuba and Brazil and so call them different names. You will even hear some names I ain't tell you, but we all mean the same thing. Them is the ones who does carry we prayers to God Father, for he too busy to listen to every single one of we on earth talking at he all the time. Each of we have a special one who is we father or mother, and no matter what we call it, whether Shango or Santeria or Voudun or what, we all doing the same thing. Serving the spirits. — Nalo Hopkinson

My mother kept calling me out of myself. She wanted to show me a picture, the first picture from the slave-ship exhibition. 'This is unbelievable,' she said. 'Myra, you have to see this, this is unbelievable.' I cringed at how fast she was talking. Why unbelievable? This all actually happened! Why is this all so hard to believe? — Tamara Faith Berger

By lunchtime, the rest of the school was still talking about last night's epic howler at Hell Hall, but Mal had no interest. The party was the past; she'd moved on. She had bigger things to worry about now. All she could think about was how her mother wanted the Dragon's Eye back. And how Maleficent wouldn't see her as anything other than her father's daughter - in other words, a pathetic, soft human - until Mal could prove her wrong. Mal kept reliving last night's conversation over and over, so that she missed her first few classes and sleepwalked through the rest. She arrived for her one-on-one after-school seminar with Lady — Melissa De La Cruz

I am not really much interested in talking to adults, although I suppose practically every mother in the kingdom knows my name and my books. It's their children I love. — Enid Blyton

Rube, this is me you're talking to, Clancy Crew, remember? Your best buddy? And I hate to break it to you this way but your grandmother on your mother's side, she isn't sick - she's dead! — Lauren Child

The reason why Jane's spirit was not broken was that she had a secret. It was her own special secret and she had told no one else except Peggy. She locked it in her heart and hugged it to herself. It was this glorious secret that filled her with such irrepressible joy and exhilaration. But it was also to be the cause of her greatest disaster, and her life-long grief.
The rumour that her father was a high-born gentleman in Parliament must have reached Jane's ears when she was a little girl. Perhaps she had heard the officers talking about it, or perhaps another child had heard the adults talking and told her. Perhaps Jane's mother had told another workhouse inmate, who had passed it on. One can never tell how rumours start.
To Jane, it was not a rumour. It was an absolute fact. Her daddy was a high-born gentleman, who one day would come and take her away. She fantasised endlessly about her daddy. She talked to him, and he talked to her. — Jennifer Worth

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 love to work, although sometimes I can spend whole days doing nothing more than picking the lint off the carpet and talking to my mother on the phone. — Beth Henley

I argued that talking is a female trait and that I would do my best to keep it under control, but that I would never be able to break myself of the habit, since my mother talked as much as I did, if not more, and that there's not much you can do about inherited traits. — Anne Frank

But Max said: "Last summer I spent working these peace booths at state fairs. We'd go around in this bigole pickup with this knocked-down booth in the back and boxes of literature. People'd come up to me and hear me talking about colonialism or the bomb or who was responsible for the Cold War, and they'd start railing on Communists. Communists, these damn Communists. And I'd say hey, hold on now, you're talkin' about my mother. They'd look at me like I'd turned into a Russky before their very eyes. It certainly shut 'em up." He smiled to remember, delighted. "They were good people. Country people. Didn't want to say anything bad about a fellow's mom." Saul — John Crowley

Every town has a psychopath or two. Not just the everyday crazy person, either. Not like Crazy Larry, the paint huffing weirdo peddling around town on a child-sized Huffy ranting about the end of the world, or the old lady dressed in rags who hands out filthy doll clothes to the kiddies. I'm talking about the cold, never remorseful lunatic, who may never have seemed insane up until the day he hacked apart his mother and shoved her stinking corpse into the attic. This town is overflowing with them; bloodcurdling murderers like Kenny Wayne Hilbert, Charlie Fender ... Orland Winthro. And Al, the crazy had to come from somewhere. — Nikki Ferguson

Petyr had been talking about mathematics again, boring everyone, when her mother looked up from her plate with a smile and announced that Julie had written a letter to say she'd quit the family. Clarissa's mouth had dropped open. It was like saying that the sun had decided to become a politician or that four had decided to be eight. It wasn't quite incomprehensible, but it lived on the edge. — James S.A. Corey

I was six years old, watching my pregnant mother wash the dishes. Cutlery clinked, filling the air with sparkling bursts of colour.
'Do it again!' I begged her, bouncing in my seat.
My mother glanced back at me. 'Do what?'
'Make the stars.'
'Stars?'
It never occurred to me that she couldn't' see what I was seeing. 'The gold ones', I said.
'I don't know what you're talking about.' she replied, and with a child's impatience, I hopped down from my stool to show her.
'Like this,' I said, taking two spoons and clanging them together. Each clink produced another starburst expanding luminous through the air between us.
'You mean,' said my mother slowly, 'the sound makes you think of the stars?'
'No, it makes the stars.. — R. J. Anderson

The boy I just kissed is talking to my father. The boy I want to kiss again is waiting for my mother to serve
pancakes.
I must fight the urge to freak. — David Levithan

I'm not going to tell you it's not dangerous for you. It is. But if we don't do something, the Royals will be sentenced
to the Ice Caverns. You'll never see Galen or your mother again. I'll never see Rayna again."
"But you're mated to Rayna. Doesn't that make you a Royal, too?"
"Not a true Royal, that's not how it works. They're only talking about purebloods. Paca will be exempt, too. If they're sentenced to the Caverns, we'll both be free to choose different mates. But I don't want another mate, Emma. I want Rayna. I always have. — Anna Banks

I heard my mother talking badly of me to people who were talking badly of me in her salon. That's probably the thing that I'm most sensitive of in all my friendships and my relationships. I just ... I just can't take that. I'm comfortable with enemies, but I can't take it from friends. — Vincent Gallo

When Sister Ibinabo was talking to Christie, with that poisonous spite she claimed was religious guidance, Ifemelu had looked at her and suddenly seen something of her own mother. Her mother was a kinder and simpler person, but like Sister Ibinabo, she was a person who denied that things were as they were. A person who had to spread the cloak of religion over her own petty desires. Suddenly, the last thing Ifemelu wanted was to be in that small room full of shadows. It had all seemed benign before, her mother's faith, all drenched in grace, and suddenly it no longer was. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Elijah, as always, is being unusually kind. While he himself is not lonely, he doesn't mind talking to lonely people. He is the Mother Teresa of banter. — David Levithan

That evening, as he got ready for bed, he heard his mother and father talking in their bedroom, and that was how he learned that Billy had been naked when he was discovered and that the police had arrested a man who lived with his mother in a clean little house not far from where the body was found. David knew from the way they were talking that something very bad had happened to Billy before he died, something to do with the man from the clean little house.
...
Now, in another bedroom, he thought of Jonathan Tulvey and Anna, and wondered if a man from a clean little house, a man who lived with his mother and kept sweets in his pockets, had made them go down with him to the railroad tracks.
And there, in the darkness, he had played with them, in his way. — John Connolly

Mia: I was sixteen when I first realized my mom was more concerned about my appearance than I was ... I'll be talking to my mom and realize she hasn't heard a word because she's studying my face to see if the foundation I'm using is a good match for my skin tone. — Mia Fontaine

I observed an eighteen-year-old friend of one of our daughters talking to his mother on the telephone. As he hung up the phone in frustration he said, "She makes me so angry, she's always telling me what to think and where to go and how to do things." He was obviously upset and filled with anger. I told him he had one of two choices. He could either continue to practice being right, or practice being kind. If you insist on being right you will argue, get frustrated, angry, and your problem will persist with your mom, I explained. If you simply practice being kind, you can remind yourself that this is your mom, she's always been that way, she will very likely stay that way, but you are going to send her love instead of anger when she starts in with her routine. A simple statement of kindness such as, "That's a good point, Mom, I'll think about it," and you have a spiritual solution to your problem. — Wayne W. Dyer

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
Should you tell your mother something if it is important when she is talking to company? I am six.
GENTLE READER:
Yes, you should (after saying "Excuse me"). Here are some of the things that are important to tell your mother, even though she is talking to company:
"Mommy, the kitchen is full of smoke."
"Daddy's calling from Tokyo."
"Kristen fell out of her crib and I can't put her back."
"There's a policeman at the door and he says he wants to talk to you."
"I was just reaching for my ball, and the goldfish bowl fell over."
Now, here are some things that are not important, so they can wait until your mother's company has gone home:
"Mommy, I'm tired of playing blocks. What do I do now?"
"The ice-cream truck is coming down the street."
"Can I give Kristen the rest of my applesauce?"
"I can't find my crayons."
"When are we going to have lunch? I'm hungry. — Judith Martin

Come to rob my sister then,have you?"
"Certainly not," Mother replied, her smile brittle.
"This fashion for talking to the dead is pure poppycock,if you ask me.Dead is dead."
"Agatha,that's rude even for you," Mrs. Gordon said.
"Shall we begin,Mrs. Willoughby, before my sister's abominable manners drive you clear away? — Alyxandra Harvey

My
mother hoped that
i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could — E. E. Cummings

If her mother had been observing this interaction, she'd tell Clementine she was wrong, that she needed to keep talking, to say everything that was on her mind, to communicate, to leave no possibility for misinterpretation.

If her father were here, he'd put his finger to his lips and say, "Shh."

Clementine settled for two words.

"I'm sorry," she said. — Liane Moriarty

He's fine," Kamala said. "It's not like that. You're not listening." "I am listening! You just told me he's delusional, and I'm asking - " "I DID NOT SAY HE IS DELUSIONAL. I SAID HE WAS TALKING TO HIS MOTHER." "Who is dead," Amina said gently. "Obvious." "And that's not delusional? — Mira Jacob