Quotes about grandmother (170 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Why are you in such a rush?" Sophia asked, and her grandmother answered that it was a good idea to do things before you forgot that they had to be done.”

Tove Jansson book The Summer Book

Source: The Summer Book

Idea

“It's funny about love', Sophia said. 'The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.'
'That's very true,' Grandmother observed. 'And so what do you do?'
'You go on loving,' said Sophia threateningly. 'You love harder and harder.”

Tove Jansson book The Summer Book

Source: The Summer Book

Love

“My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Education , School

“Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Study , Time

“Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

Source: The Hour of Decision

“The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

Love , Men , Children , People

“It's a little bit like what Akari said to his grandmother in Shikoku, during her final illness: 'Please cheer up and die!”

Kenzaburō Ōe book A Personal Matter

A Personal Matter (1964)

“I actually wanted to go to medical school. I actually wanted to be a laboratory biologist. I wanted to study. And I really wanted to find a cure for cancer. My grandmother had died of cancer. And I was always very good at the sciences. And I thought I would go and try and discover the cure for cancer.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Larry King interview (2003)

School , Study , Science

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity — she doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, you know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way. And that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. And what makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling a little bit less like that, and that's pretty powerful stuff.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Interview on radio staion 610 WIP (20 March 2008), as quoted in Chris Wallace criticizes Fox & Friends for "two hours of Obama bashing" in which hosts "distort … what Obama had to say" (21 March 2008) http://mediamatters.org/print/research/200803210008
2008

Way , Feeling , Nature , Personality

“… behind me there were ghosts of people like a trailing fog as far as I could see - grandfathers of grandfathers and grandmothers of grandmothers without number.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)

People

“When I was a child the atmosphere in the house was one of puritan piety and austerity. There were family prayers at eight o'clock every morning. Although there were eight servants, food was always of Spartan simplicity, and even what there was, if it was at all nice, was considered too good for children. For instance, if there was apple tart and rice pudding, I was only allowed the rice pudding. Cold baths all the year round were insisted upon, and I had to practice the piano from seven-thirty to eight every morning although the fires were not yet lit. My grandmother never allowed herself to sit in an armchair until the evening. Alcohol and tobacco were viewed with disfavor although stern convention compelled them to serve a little wine to guests. Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 9

Children , Health , Alcohol , Family

“From the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick to receive the candle. But man is only briefly competent:…After fifty his performance is of poor quality; the intervals between are wide, and its satisfactions of no great quality to either party; whereas his great-grandmother is as good as new.”

Mark Twain book Letters from the Earth

Letters from the Earth (1909)

Time , Age

“This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations — the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Ch. XXXVIII http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5811/5811-h/5811-h.htm
Following the Equator (1897)

God , Religion , History , Country

“The Jewish Nigger, Lassalle… It is now quite plain to me — as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify — that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger).”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Now, this blend of Jewishness and Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow’s importunity is also nigger-like.
Marx to Engels in Manchester http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.html (30 July 1862), MECW Volume 41, p. 388; first published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913, and in full in MEGA, Berlin, 1930.

Way

“You do not have to tear down the old or what currently exists to create change. Not everyone may be interested in the change you are contemplating. My grandmother would have never given up her manual can opener.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1979

Tear , Change

“You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Variant: My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the heck she is.

Hell , Funny

“Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

Food

“Your sword is made out of your grandmother’s bones?”
“Okay, I see how it sounds weird when you say it in that tone of voice”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

“Her grandmother had once told her that one of life's best lessons was not being afraid to look foolish -- to just ask the question.”

Melissa Senate (1965) american writer

Life , Question

“I shall never have a bath again," I said.
"Just dont have one too often," my grandmother said. "Once a month is quite enough for a sensible child." It was at times like these that I loved my grandmother more than ever.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

Love , Time

“I was beginning to understand. My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things; that was why everything had to be perfect.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Incantation

Love , Understanding , Perfection

“Would Grandmother scold him? Would she say, “Frank! Thank the gods, you've come. I'm surrounded by monsters.”
More likely she'd scold him, or mistake them for intruders and chase them off with a frying pan.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

God

“You're dropping the bow hand as you release," he called, although Halt certainly wasn't.
His mentor looked around, saw him, and replied pithily, "I believe your grandmother needs lessons in sucking eggs.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Halt's Peril

“Wish for what you want, work for what you need.
-Carmen's grandmother”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

“People have often told me that one of their strongest childhood memories is the scent of their grandmother's house. I never knew my grandmothers, but I could always count of the Bookmobile.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: Big Stone Gap

People , Memory , Childhood , Housing

“my grandmother has given me her own version of the precious gift: the most precious gift any teenager coul ask for:
MY GRANDMOTHER HAS GIVEN MY MY OWN SEX PLACE!!!!!”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Princess on the Brink

Sex

“So, if you have a grandma, thank the good Lord above, and give your grandmamma hugs and kisses, for grandmothers are to love.”

Lois Wyse (1926–2007) American advertising executive

Love , Kiss , Grandma

“I’m not trying to—What do teenagers say nowadays?” he asked my grandmother.“Get all up in her biznez,” Nana said. Without cracking a smile.“That’s right,” he replied. “We’re not trying to get all up in your biznez, Ali.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

Smile

“It’s all right,” the boy murmured as he felt her trembling. “My grandmother always told me ‘Never try to turn back on a new road—you don’t know what adventures await you.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Boy

“I went to college. Got a master’s degree. Went to Quantico for training. Been chasing down bad guys.”
She gave her grandmother a wry look. “You know, the usual girly stuff.”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Source: The Vampire and the Virgin

Guy , Training

“Mom?" Mother turned to Grandmother.
"What?"
"She's going to lunch with her kidnapper!"
"Take a picture for me," Grandma said.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Moms , Grandma

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

Iain Banks book The Crow Road

Source: The Crow Road

“My grandmother used to say life was so much easier when you were simple-minded.
It’s taken me almost my whole life to understand what she meant.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Still Mostly True

Life , Understanding

“I pointed to the wound. "It's missing," I said.

My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. "Yes," she said. "But see how much of me is left?”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Smile

“If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.”

Edwidge Danticat book Breath, Eyes, Memory

Source: Breath, Eyes, Memory

“Grandmothers in Botswana tell their children that if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, you must go together.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Leaving Time

Children

“If you’re really hard up, I can introduce you to my grandmother. She’s a fan.” Adam blinked. “She doesn’t typically sleep with pretty young things, but she would make an exception in your case. You might even learn a trick or two.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Sleep , Learning

“Do you know what most people have from their grandmother? A tea set. Or a quilt.” Curran smiled. “If your family had a quilt, it would be made out of chimera skin and stuffed with feathers from dead angels.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

People , Family , Smile , Angels

“I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“It’s a sword made out of your grandmother’s bones, Kate.”

I shrugged.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

“Hazel squinted. "How far?"
"Just over the river and through the woods."
Percy raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? To Grandmother's house we go?"
Frank cleared his throat. "Yeah, anyway.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Housing

“You, your grandmother, the chairman----YOU'RE ALL ABUNCH OF FRIGGIN' IDIOTS!!!"

~Haruhi”

Bisco Hatori (1975) Japanese manga artist

Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 16

“If she wasn't your grandmother I'd shoot her."
Ranger”

Janet Evanovich book Hot Six

Source: Hot Six

“I can't promise we'll ever use you for a hasty getaway," Cole said, "but with a little work, you might be able to race my grandmother-while she's on her scooter.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

“In spite of the seven thousand books of expert advice, the right way to disciplne a child is still a mystery to most fathers and… mothers Only your grandmother and Genghis Khan know how to do it.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Books , Way

“There's a saying I remember from my grandmother: One today is worth two tomorrows.”

James Patterson book Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Source: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

“My grandmother is a little Cuban woman who cooks all day and speaks Spanish. Your grandmother watches pay-per-view porn."
"She used to watch the Weather Channel, but she said there wasn't enough action."

-Ranger and Stephanie”

Janet Evanovich book To the Nines

Source: To the Nines

Weather , Cooking

“I thought grandmothers had to like you. It’s a law or something.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Law

“It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you're pretending to be.”

John Boyne (1971) Irish novelist, author of children's and youth fiction

Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Feeling , Personality

“Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Source: The Complete Poems 1927-1979

Tear , Singing , Time , Drawing

“My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together?

Bread, of course.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Family

“I’m supposed to figure out if the glass is half full or half empty,” I told her.

Without a moment’s hesitation, in a split second, my grandmother shrugged and said: “It depends on if you’re drinking or pouring.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Drink , Dependency

“I tried to talk to Annabeth, but she was acting like I'd just punched her grandmother.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

“I finally understood what my grandmother meant. If I wasn't comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable.”

Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist

Source: Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“I never said I do not remember, my grandmother corrects. I said I prefer to forget.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Forgetting

“I mourn my sword, but that’s alright. Grandmother gave me another one.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

“When he asked my grandmother if she would mind being poor, she said she would be happy just to have her daughter and himself: 'If you have love, even plain water is sweet.”

Jung Chang (1952) writer from China

Source: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Love , Water , Daughters , Happiness

“A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

“Happiness is the twinkle in your grandmother's eye as you reverse the tractor off her legs.”

Hugh Laurie (1959) British actor, comedian, writer, musician and director

Happiness

“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

variant: If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself.
variant: If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Frequently attributed to Richard Feynman
Probably based on a similar quote about explaining physics to a "barmaid" by Ernest Rutherford
Page 418 of Einstein: His Life and Times (1972) by Ronald W. Clark says that Louis de Broglie did attribute a similar statement to Einstein:
: To de Broglie, Einstein revealed an instinctive reason for his inability to accept the purely statistical interpretation of wave mechanics. It was a reason which linked him with Rutherford, who used to state that "it should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid." Einstein, having a final discussion with de Broglie on the platform of the Gare du Nord in Paris, whence they had traveled from Brussels to attend the Fresnel centenary celebrations, said "that all physical theories, their mathematical expressions apart ought to lend themselves to so simple a description 'that even a child could understand them.' "
The de Broglie quote is from his 1962 book New Perspectives in Physics, p. 184 http://books.google.com/books?id=xY45AAAAMAAJ&q=%22mathematical+expression+apart%22#search_anchor.
Cf. this quote from David Hilbert's talk Mathematical Problems given in 1900 before the International Congress of Mathematicians:
: "A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street."
Cf. this quote from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle:
: Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan.
Misattributed

Understanding

“And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Hope , Flowers , Reading

“In a sense, my grandmother was living in the Iron Age. There was no system of writing among the nomads. Metal artifacts were rare and precious. … The first time she saw a white person my grandmother was in her thirties: she thought this person's skin had burned off.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 1: Bloodlines

Age , Sense , Time , Personality

“I've never had a grandmother, a great-grandmother, nor a great-great-grandmother. I never even had a mother. I have certainly missed a great deal of love thereby, but fortune has compensated me by not giving me the capacity to hate anyone, neither nations nor individuals. If candlesticks and church bells have been plundered from my ancestors, then I'm only grateful that I'm so ignorant about genealogy.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Ólafur
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

Love , Hate

“I was surrounded by dance, music and religious chants, so it was that kind of a mood. Our family was very culturally-minded, especially my grandmother. She was also quite the disciplinarian. She made sure I practiced daily for hours.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

In "There's no slowing down for Vyjayanthimala".

Family , Music , Mood , Dance

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)

Exercises , Girl , Wedding , Time

“My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszów. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. Madam Deputy Speaker, my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count. On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli Army Major Livovich was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, eight hundred Palestinians. The total is now a thousand. She replied instantly, "Five hundred of them were militants."”

Gerald Kaufman (1930–2017) British politician

That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw Ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.
Speech to the House of Commons, Jan 2009

Home , Time , Fight , Dead

“I liked him. He seemed a lot more animal to me than human, which was good, of course, because my grandmother, Doña Guadalupe, had always explained to me that all humans were born with an animal-spirit to help guide them through life, and so the humans who realized this would always seem more animal than human, and this was wonderful. It kept us closer to God.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Life , God , Help , Animals

“Molecular evidence suggests that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between five and seven million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards … in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on … How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Gaps in the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Way , Personality

“She's more even -[daughter China] - I think it jumps generations. You get a screwball in one, and then the next one is straight, then you get a screwball. My grandmother was goofy, my mother was straight.”

Grace Slick (1939) American musician, writer and painter

Speaking on the Joan Rivers Show, 1990

Thinking , Daughters

“My life began when my grandmother decided to take hers, when I found out that my mother's whole family did the same thing [told bij het grandfather c. 1941], when I found out that I am the only one surviving, and when I felt the same inclination deep inside of me, craving for despair and death.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Quote in Charlotte's letter, to her father, c. 1941-43; as cited in 'Life in Pictures Charlotte Salomon and her art beyond life tragedies' https://arthive.com/publications/2850~Life_in_Pictures_Charlotte_Salomon_and_her_art_beyond_life_tragedies, on Art-smart
Charlotte wrote her father from South-France, about the events with her grandparents where she stayed. Then she took up her brush with the intention to realize an ambitious plan of creating an autobiographical novel in pictures.

Life , Death , Family , Despair

““Let them scoff as they see fit! I will never compromise what I consider my art, especially for the sake of gain!”
“For the sake of gain I’d compromise the art of my grandmother,” muttered Zamp under his breath.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 14 (p. 168)

Art

“Adolf Hitler was the third son and the fourth of six children of Alois Hitler (born Schicklgruber) (1837–1903), a minor customs official, and Klara Pölzl (1860-1907), his second cousin, and third wife. Alois was born illegitimate and for the first thirty-nine years of his life bore his mother's name, Schicklgruber. The name Hitler appears in the maternal and paternal line. Both Hitler's grandmother on his mother's side and his grandfather on his father's side were named Hitler, or rather variants of it, for the family name was variously written as Hiedler, Huetler, Huettler and Hitler. Because Adolf's mother was his father's second cousin, an episcopal dispensation had to be obtained for the marriage.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

Life , Marriage , Children , Family

“Maula Bakhsh, a peasant, lives in Tamil Nadu and speaks Tamil. In Andhra Pradesh he speaks Telugu. In Bengal, his language is Bengali. Do we think of such a Muslim for whom I have invented the name Maula Bakhsh. Jinnah, Khaliquz Zaman, Maulana Azad, the Aga Khan, M. C. Chagla and the Raja of Mehmudabad… were Muslims. So was Hakku, the elderly grandmother of our locality. She prays 5 times a day. She was so deeply moved by one of Gandhi's speeches that she would repeat his name after Allah and His Prophet. At the age of 70, she stitched her own khadi kafan, because she did not want her body to be wrapped and then buried in a foreign cloth. So when people discuss India's Muslims, I wonder who are they talking about. Maula Bakhsh? Jinnah and Co.? Or Hakku?”

Khwaja Ahmad Abbas (1914–1987) Film director, Screenwriter, Novelist, Journalist

'Maula Bakhsh bhi ek Hindustani Mussalman hai', Gagan, in Urdu (Bombay: Mussalman Number, 1975), pp. 96-7 http://web.archive.org/web/20011006030417/http://website.lineone.net/~jon.simmons/roy/010929ij.htm
Legacy of a Divided Nation: India's Muslims Since Independence by Mushirul Hasan (1997) C. Hurst & Co. Publishers ISBN 1850653046

People , Age , Thinking , Time

“Jim," she said earnestly, "if I was put down there in the middle of the night, I could find my way all over that little town; and along the river to the next town, where my grandmother lived. My feet remember all the little paths through the woods, and where the big roots stick out to trip you. I ain't never forgot my own country.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book II, Ch. 14
My Antonia (1918)

Way , Night , Country

“My grandmother—God bless her soul—a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico, was the greatest teacher I’d ever had! And do you know what she taught me, she taught me that each and every day is un milagro given to us by God, and that work, that planting corn and squash with our two hands is holy. She taught me all this with kindness and invitation. Not with ridicule and looking down her nose at me and making me feel like less than human when I didn’t get it at first.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

God , Feeling , Soul , Teachers

“A whole bunch of people towards the back of the room were now getting up to leave. But these teachers were not going to intimidate me. I wasn’t my father’s and mother’s son for nada-nothing. I wasn’t my two indigenous grandmothers’ grandson for nada-nothing either. I came from a long line of people…who’d lived through starvation, revolutions, and massacre. “AND YOU!” I yelled into the microphone. “Over there in the back…who are getting up to leave…I’M GLAD THAT YOU’RE LEAVING!”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

People , Teachers

“She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her; in the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance. "Grandmother," cried the little one, "O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas-tree." And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day, and her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Match Girl

The Little Match Girl
Fairy Tales (1835)

Love , Hunger , God , Pain

“Here we are, sixty something human minds. We’ve been migrated—while still awake—right out of our own heads using an amazing combination of nanotechnology and electron spin resonance mapping, and we’re now running as software in an operating system designed to virtualize multiple physics models and provide a simulation of reality that doesn’t let us go mad from sensory deprivation! And this whole package is about the size of a fingertip, crammed into a starship the size of your grandmother’s old Walkman, in orbit around a brown dwarf just over three light-years from home, on its way to plug into a network router created by incredibly ancient alien intelligences, and you can tell me that the idea of a fundamental change in the human condition is nonsense?”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 5 (“Router”), p. 184

Way , Home , Intelligence , Idea

“I always cribbed about having such a long name and my grandmother would say that nobody else will be called ‘Vyjayanthimala.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

In "Why Vyjayanthimala has 'nothing to say' about today's heroines".

“In exasperation, I furiously attacked the floors and walls of the Moscow Theater. My mural paintings sight there, in obscurity. Have you seen them? Rant and rave, my contemporaries! In one way or another, my first theatrical alphabet gave you a belly-ache. Not modest? I'll leave that to my grandmother: it bores me. Despise me, if you like.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

ca. 1921
Quote from 'Chagall in the Yiddish Theater', Avram Kampf, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 94
1920's

Way , Painting

“The younger they are, the more tolerant and accepting they are of LGBT Muslims, there are even older Muslims who are now supportive, including a grandmother here and there.”

Daayiee Abdullah (1954) Homosexual Muslim activist

First Gay ‘Imam’ in USA Says ‘Quran Doesn’t Call for Punishment of Homosexuals’ http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/05/159043/first-gay-imam-in-usa-says-quran-doesnt-call-for-punishment-of-homosexuals/ (22 May 2015), Morocco World News.

Support

“Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it. We can change our life, our being; no matter what our will is, we are changed. As the moon changes yet is one, so we are virgin, wife, mother, grandmother. For all their restlessness, men are who they are; once they put on the man's toga they will not change again; so they make a virtue of that rigidity and resist whatever might soften it and set them free.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Lavinia

Source: Lavinia (2008), p. 184

Life , Women , Men , Truth

“I'd been two years locked up in hospitals. I was twenty when I got out from Bloomingdale and I met a young man from Harvard who was very attractive in a sort of Ivy League way. And we made love in my grandmother's apartment and it was terrific, it was just fabulous. That was the first time I ever made love, and I had no inhibitions or anything. It was just beautiful. I didn't get my period and so I had to tell my doctor. The hospital pass was given to see if you could handle yourself outside. I was terrified to tell him that I thought I was pregnant, but I finally did. I was pregnant. I could get an abortion without any hassle at all, just on the grounds of a psychiatric case. So that wasn't too good a first experience with lovemaking. I mean it kind of screwed up my head, for one thing. This fellow found out. I was upset... and he asked me, and I said, "I'm pregnant. I'm not going to ask you for anything, so don't get uptight, but it's just kind of making me uncomfortable. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do about it."”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

He split, and I didn't see him again until the summer had passed and I went to Cambridge for my first free year.
On becoming pregnant after her first sexual experience
Edie : American Girl (1982)

Love , Beauty , Way , Time

“We have become a grandmother.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Statement to the press on the birth of her first grandchild (3 March 1989) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107590
Third term as Prime Minister

“So then God created the world, and on the first day he created light and air and fish and jam and soup and potatoes and haircuts and arguments and small things and rabbits and people with noses and jam – more jam, perhaps – and soot and flies and tobogganing and showers and toasters and grandmothers and, uh … Belgium. And the second day he created fire and water and eggnog and radiators and lights and Burma and things that go "urh" and … and Colonel Gaddafi and Arthur Negus. On the third day he probably got lists and said, "I can't remember what I've invented now. I've just been ad-libbing so far."”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Glorious (1997)

God , People , World , Fish

“Nobody liked the caesar haircut. It was such an issue this year. There were memos about it. (…) I knew it was doomed when my grandmother, who swore she would never leave Ireland again, came over for the last time, walked in the door and told me I had to change my hairstyle. Not for my own sake, but because I had 'relations' and it's embarrassing for them.”

Joshua Jackson (1978) Canadian actor

As quoted in the article "Dawson's Geek" in Us Weekly magazine (October 1998)

Change , Time

“And, because of the life that I shared with these two amazing women [her mother and maternal grandmother] and the hardships and struggles that I saw them overcome, I learned an invaluable lesson: and that is that women can do anything we set our minds to... and then some!”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

address to LULAC (July 1, 2005)
2007, 2008

Life , Women , Learning , Maternity

“Everything that tends to make it difficult to distinguish youth from age is an act of civilization. The best-mannered age in history invented the wig - a homage rendered by hair to baldness. The effect of powder and rouge is to make young women like their grandmothers, and invalids like healthy people. Clever dressmaking establishments and beauty shops create fashions which make it possible for elderly women to keep hoping. After a certain age, the art of dressing consists of hiding one's shortcomings, and this is another form of politeness. The veil is a marvelous invention for confusing the image and giving its wearers the semblance of beauty. All adornments are veils: they conceal the ravages of time as well as may be.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Women , People , Youth , Age

“The person who started my nomadic life was my grandmother.”

Anni-Frid Lyngstad (1945) Swedish female singer

Interview on Skavlan (2014)

Life , Personality

“Blithe spirits bringing a myriad colours to our gardens, magic, ephemeral wings -- butterflies -- with short life-spans of a week to a few months. But why such an unpoetic name for a delicate daughter of nature? The Germans call them Schmetterlinge (even less onomatopoetic), the Russians call them бабочка (not to be confused with Бабушка, which means grandmother), the Greek πεταλουδα (which makes you think of petals), the French call them papillons (which is closer to the Latin papilio). Perhaps the more congenial, smoother descriptions are the Spanish mariposa and the delicate Dutch vlinder.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred de Zayas on personal website http://alfreddezayas.com.

Life , Nature , Thinking , Daughters

“Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on.”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

Letter to Emily Holmes Coleman (2 February 1934) http://www.case.edu/artsci/engl/VSALM/mod/brandelmcdaniel/index/library.htm

Love , Suffering , Learning

“I have a faculty of memorizing any song or poem as I hear it, many, especially the old Scotch and Irish ballads I heard my grandmother sing when I was but a child.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Robert W. Gordon (February 15, 1926)
Letters

Singing

“The snow fell solemnly, enlarging the silence; it came straight down from heaven, bringing an inexplicable mystery. Now and again a flake or two would alight on the windowpane, and those flakes were like little stars filled with light; other snowflakes would fall on the windowsill, slowly covering the crumbs that had been put out for the birds. I would ask: "Grandmama, would you tell me some things about heaven too?" And Grandmother would say: "Why do you say 'too'?"”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

"Because the snow comes from there, and it seems to be telling me that everything in heaven is white."
Les Tilleuls, p. 21
My Early Years (1968)

Star , Bird , Light , Silence

“Is it on your grandmother’s or grandfather’s side that you are descended from an ape?”

Samuel Wilberforce (1805–1873) Bishop in the Church of England

To Thomas Henry Huxley, debating Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/evolution/how-did-evol-theory-develop/the-story/index.html

“If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation. Most do so directly, by breeding. In the few examples that don't do so by design, they do it indirectly, by helping a relative with whom they share a great number of their genes. And in as much as the legacy that human beings pass on to the next generation is not only genetic but to a unique degree cultural, we do the same. So animals and ourselves, to continue the line, will endure all kinds of hardship, overcome all kinds of difficulties, and eventually the next generation appears. This albatross is over 30 years old, she's already a grandmother, and this year once again she has produced a chick. She will devote the next 10 months of her life looking after it. She has faced the trials of life and triumphed, for her little 2 day old chick the trials are just beginning.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
The Trials of Life (1990)

Life , Appearance , Time , Help

“This is for my peoples who just lost somebody,
your best friend, your baby, your man or your lady,
put your hand way up high,
we will never say bye,
mamas, daddies, sisters, brothers, friends and cousins,
this is for my peoples who lost their grandmothers,
lift your head to the sky,
cause we will never say bye.”

Mariah Carey (1970) American singer-songwriter

"Bye Bye", "E=MC²", 2008
Lyrics

People , Way , Sister , Baby

“As a little girl, I would always ask my grandmother what it would take to be successful in life. … She said all you need are the three bones: the wishbone, the jawbone, and the backbone. The wishbone would keep you hoping and praying because hope is the motivator, but the dream is the driver. The jawbone will give you courage to speak truth to power, lift your voice — it should matter that you’re in the room, that you’re in that space with that voice. The backbone … will give you courage to stand through all of your trials and tribulations.”

Nina Turner (1967) American politician

"Nina Turner: Leader of the American Progressive Movement," Democracy in Color, June 30, 2016 https://democracyincolor.com/nina-turner-leader-of-the-american-progressive-movement-c822ea458204#.wg5lytrc9

Life , Truth , Dreams , Hope