“And my mother said—and I remember this as if it were yesterday—my mother with a washcloth in her hand and me standing at the sink, she said, "You must have said something to get them angry."”

— Harlan Ellison

And it was an icicle just jammed into my chest. That my own mother—and with cause! It was not as if I was the greatest kid in the world. I was a troublemaker! I was a brat! I was a big-mouth pain in the ass! But that my own mother would not understand—at that moment I had what, now at age seventy-two I understand, was an enormous epiphany, which is: I really cannot support it, I cannot bear it, when people laugh at me.
Source: Dreams with Sharp Teeth (2008) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1018887/ (documentary), at about 28:10.
Context: About being beaten up by bullies as a child.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "And my mother said—and I remember this as if it were yesterday—my mother with a washcloth in her hand and me standing a…" by Harlan Ellison?

Harlan Ellison photo

Harlan Ellison 79

American writer 1934–2018

Related quotes

“I rang my mother to thank her for giving birth to me and she said, "What choice had I? You were in there, how else were you going to get out?”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Source: Anybody Out There?

“You never get mad,” she said when their server left the table. “Except at me.”
“That’s not true,” he said tightly. “Torie can get me going.”
“Torie doesn’t count. You were obviously her mother in a previous life.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Call Me Irresistible

“You said go to her, and I let pride stand in my way. You said she needed me, and I didn't believe. You said love her, and I thought it would be easy.”

Francine Rivers (1947) American writer

Source: Redeeming Love

“Like my mother said, you can't go back to holding hands”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Source: Forever . . .

“My mother told me I said to her, at age three, 'I'm going to go to Italy and get my father in a tractor.' 'You've never seen quite so fierce a little boy as you were,' she told me. She tried to explain that I couldn't get my father in a tractor. Apparently I looked at her and narrowed my eyes and said 'In that case, I'm going in a double-decker bus,' and stomped off. Which is kind of funny, but it's very sad, as well.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

In an interview in Rolling Stones Magazine, September 30, 2010, talking about his father who was killed in WWII.
Miscellaneous

“What a childhood I had. My mother never breast-fed me. She said she liked me as a friend.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (2004), p. 19

“She loved her mother and depended on her mother, and yet every single word her mother said annoyed her.”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

“But I think she would have been happy with Fabrice,' I said. 'He was the great love of her life, you know.'
Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly. 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.”

Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) British writer

Source: The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

“That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses.
"Save them for my funeral," I'd said.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“One relative felt that the story of my grandmother should not have been revealed. My grandmother was the woman (in The Kitchen God's Wife) who had been raped, forced to be a concubine, and finally killed herself. My mother, though, got equally angry at the relative and said, "For so many years, I carried this shame on my back, and my mother suffered, because she couldn't say anything to anybody." And she said, "It's not too late; tell the world, tell the world what happened to her."”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

And I take her mandate to be the one that is in my heart, the one that I should follow.
SALON Interview (1995)

Related topics