Quotes about mother
page 6

“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

“When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter V
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Mountain, Wolf, Cry

“My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

“You’re not alone, and you’re not the one in charge,” Mother said gently. “Ask for help when you need it, and give help when you can. I think that is how we serve God—and each other and ourselves—in times as dark as these.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

God, Thinking, Time, Help

“It's his mother's birthday? But he didn't tell me. I don't have a card. I don't have a gift. How could he do this to me?

Men are crap.”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

“Deprivation is the mother of poetry.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Source: The Favorite Game

“Sometimes being a good mother gets in the way of being a good person.”

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey (1938) American journalist and playwright

Source: A Woman of Independent Means

Way, Personality

“How did you know Cassandra was the mother? (Wulf)
I know lots of things when I apply myself. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

“Culture Clash

Dylan says
when I meet his mother today
I shouldn't mention
that I'm Jewish.

I say
okay, but can I
tell her about
the HIV postive thing?

He gives me a look.
I give him one back”

Sonya Sones book What My Mother Doesn't Know

Source: What My Mother Doesn't Know

“A lot of my generation are living out the un-lived lives of our mothers.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

“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 book Great House

Source: Great House

“My first words, as I was being born… I looked up at my mother and said, "that's the last time I'm coming out one of those."”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

On being gay
Stephen Fry actually admitted this was a quote from a friend, not himself. (Moab Is My Washpot)
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

“No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

“A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

“Sweet mother of chaos," he breathed. "Rachel, you are indeed one of us. Have your time in the sun. You're worth the extra wait.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

Time, Waiting, Sun

“I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.”

Nella Larsen (1891–1964) Novelist, librarian, nurse

Source: The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and the Stories

World, Thinking

“Let go of me or slow down," she demanded as she tried to keep pace with him.
He slowed down. "I swear to God, you try the patience of a saint."
"You aren't a saint, Brodick, no matter what your mother might have told you.”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Source: Ransom

“I didn't listen to her because she was my mother & wouldn't know anything until I was much older.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.”

John Irving book Until I Find You

Source: Until I Find You

“By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Sun, For Mother

“You can't love your mother or father if you don't also have the capacity to grieve their deaths and, perhaps even more so, grieve parts of their lives.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Source: The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life

Love, Death, Parting

“When I was a fetus, I used to sneak out at night when my mother was sleeping. I figured I should start stealing stuff while I still had no fingerprints.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“We love our mother unknowingly, and only realize how deep-rooted that love is at the ultimate separation.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

“My mother said I broke her heart… but it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us… but within that inch we are free.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Heart, Selfishness

“I saw in her expression that old, unshakable mountain of concern. And I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

“I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Women, Girl, Thinking

“There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.”

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…

“Mother used to say it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“I can always tell when you're reading somewhere in the house,' my mother used to say. 'There's a special silence, a reading silence.”

Francis Spufford (1964) British writer

Source: The Child That Books Built: A Life in Reading

Silence, Reading, Housing

“I used to tell your mother she looked like Sophia Lauren." He looks at me, frowning, and then it registers.
"Oh God, some guy's using that line on you, isn't he?"
"Not just 'some guy'." I tell him. "The guy.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

“mother says that two souls are sometimes created together and--and in love before they're born.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

“I'll never forget my first time with you' Min said as she edged the doughnut off her finger. 'The earth moved, and then my mother asked my father who he was going down on at lunch.”

Jennifer Crusie book Bet Me

Source: Bet Me

Time, Forgetting

“Your name is Lily Whitney. You are the woman I want at my side night and day. I want you to be the mother of my children someday. I want you for my lover. I want you for the person I turn to when the world gets to be too much.”

Christine Feehan book Shadow Game

Source: Shadow Game

Children, World, Lovers, Personality

“You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that."

To a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

“Oh, my dear! I’m afraid you’ve mistaken
me for someone else! My name is Rhea Silvia. I was the mother to Romulus and Remus, thousands of years ago. But you’re so kind to think I look as young as the 1950s.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“You suck, surprising no one!!!! If bad was a boot, you'd fit it!!!! You're a stupid poo-poo head! I had sexual relations with your mother! Your mother was not that good in bed! You, sir, are a wretched soul! I am rubber, you are glue!”

Bryan Lee O'Malley (1979) Artist

Source: Scott Pilgrim, Volume 2: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Stupidity, Soul

“I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“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

Love, Life, Happiness, Thinking

“We aren't poor," my mother said, again and again. "Because we're rich in love.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Mother,” Hyacinth said with a great show of solicitude,
“you know I love you dearly—”
“Why is it,” Violet pondered, “that I have come to expect
nothing good when I hear a sentence beginning in
that manner?”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: It's in His Kiss

“It's all right. I'm not upset. After all, they were just. When you've lost your mother and your father, you can't care so much about, can you?”

Kazuo Ishiguro book When We Were Orphans

Source: When We Were Orphans

“… mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.”

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“i feel bad for her - i do. a damn shame, really, that i had to have a mother. it can’t be easy having me for a son. nothing can prepare someone for that kind of disappointment.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Disappointment, Feeling

“Well, hello there, Mother,” Sebastian said in a voice like silk. “Surprised to see me?”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“Evie ” came his faint whisper “I’m going to your mother see…she’s got ’em to leave a back door open…so I can steal into ’eaven.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

“In the wild, an elephant mother and daughter stay in close proximity their whole lives; I hope I am that lucky.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Leaving Time

Hope, Daughters

“If I gave my mother a knitted scarf she'd be worried I was wasting my time doing stupid stuff like knitting instead of school work. Presenting a homemade knitted object to my parents was actually like handing them a detailed backlog of my idleness.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Stupidity, School, Parent, Time

“This must be part of Mother Nature's master plan—making these boys so irresistibly cute, in such a naughty way, that the purity of their intentions becomes irrelevant.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Way, Boy, Nature, Parting

“In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish.”

Mercedes Lackey (1950) American novelist and short story writer

Source: The Silver Gryphon

Question, Fish, Dead

“As infants, our first victory comes in grasping some bit of the world, usually our mother's fingers. Later we discover that the world, and the things of the world, are grasping us, and have been all along.”

Stephen King book Just After Sunset

Source: Just After Sunset

“Maybe we're all like that with our mothers. They seem ordinary until one day they're extraordinary.”

Lisa See book Shanghai Girls

Source: Shanghai Girls

“Nathan Sutter," the teacher read.
Here. My mother never calls me Nathan."
Is it Nate?"
She calls me Honeylips.”

Brandon Mull The Candy Shop War

Source: The Candy Shop War

Teachers, Reading

“…the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. The worst thing already had.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“What do girls do who haven't any mothers to help them through their troubles?”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

“Looking at him now-even if she hadn't been in love with him, that part of her that was her mother's daugher, that loved every beautiful thing for its beauty alone, would still have wanted him.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Love, Beauty, Parting

“My mother is a fish.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying (1930)

“My mother's life was way too heavy for me.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

“Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

“They (mothers-in-law) never leave when they say they will. When my mother-in-law visits, the mice throw themselves at the cat, begging to be eaten.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Married By Morning

“There's nothing like your mother's sympathetic voice to make you want to burst into tears.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

Tear, Mother's Day, For Parents, For Mother

“You killed more people than anybody in history."

"Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

People, History

“I wasn't pretty, but as my mother once said, prettiness wasn't my profession.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Screaming Staircase

Source: The Screaming Staircase

“If there is a heaven, Jane Austen is sitting in a small room with Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, listening to Duran Duran, forever. If there's a hell, she's standing.”

Roddy Doyle (1958) Irish author

“Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Life, School, Home, Parting

“There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

Children, Parent

“…she rejoiced as only mothers can in the good fortunes of their children.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

“Mothers are the necessity of invention.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“Holy mother!"
"Hmph. More like holy father. I'd think you'd know the difference."

-Hephaetus”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

“She had thought she was going to save her mother, and now there was going to be nothing for her to do but sit by her mother's bedside, hold her limp hand, and home someone else, somewhere else, would be able to do what she couldn't.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“To who?" Bex asked.
"!" her mother snapped.
"Sorry." Bex shrugged. "To," she corrected herself, even though I highly doubted that had been her mother's point.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

“But then, his revenge had been more direct. He’d hunted down the ones who’d killed his sister and nephew – those who’d survived his mother’s attack – and he’d made them wish they’d never been born with nerve endings.' (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Revenge, Sister

“Father nevver once looked at any woman the way he looked at Mother, with joy and thanksgiving, as if she was a living wish, granted past all hope.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Nothing but Shadows

Hope, Way, Past, Joy

“My mother wasnʹt sleeping with anybody. She doesnʹt even sleep with my father.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“This is my mother’s wedding,”«" she said. "We’re not going to have sex. At all."
"But ‘at all’ is my favorite way to have sex.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Sex, Way, Wedding

“… it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

Nature, Suffering

“If you want to be treated like a mother, act like one.”

Jeannette Walls book Half Broke Horses

Source: Half Broke Horses

“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.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Communication, Dead

“I'm sitting at the dinner table, wearing my future mother-in-law's underwear. It's like some twisted dream that you wake up and thinkL Crikey Moses! Thank God that didn't really happen!”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

God, Law, Dreams, Future

“I am charging you with the protection of my mother and friends, not to mention keeping my younger self off the Internet. He is as dangerous as Opal.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Time Paradox

“There is a tiger in my room,' said Frances.
'Did he bite you?' said Father.
'No,' said Frances.
'Did he scratch you?' said Mother.
'No,' said Frances.
'Then he is a friendly tiger,' said Father. 'He will not hurt you. Go back to sleep.”

Russell Hoban (1925–2011) American British novelist, children's writer and illustrator

Source: Bedtime for Frances

“The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks

“For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

“And I remind you of your mother now? I have got to look into a manlier cologne.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

“We have nothing to fear but our mothers.”

Anne Taintor (1953) American artist

“The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”

Graham Chapman (1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor

Source: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book): Mønti Pythøn Ik Den Hølie Gräilen

“Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are

Intelligence, Freedom

“It's the same with spirit guises; show me a sweet little choirboy or a smiling mother and I'll show you the hideous fanged strigoi it really is. (Not always. Just sometimes. *Your* mother is absolutely fine, for instance. Probably.)”

Jonathan Stroud book The Ring of Solomon

Source: The Ring of Solomon

“Me and my needs were driving my mother away. Me and my needs retreated to my closet, disappeared into fairy tales. I started making up a world where my needs wouldn´t exist at all.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“I won’t snatch, harm, or scare to death people with you or use checking up on you as an excuse to cause trouble. You’re worse than my mother, Rachel.”
“Mine, too,” Jenks muttered.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: White Witch, Black Curse

“This is motherhood for you,' said my own mother. 'Going through life with your heart outside your body.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

“A Mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance actually VACCINATES her daughter against low self-esteem.”

Naomi Wolf (1962) American writer

Love, Daughters

“Blood is thicker than water, my mother had always said when I was growing up, a sentiment I’d often disputed. But it turned out that it didn’t matter whether she was right or wrong. They both flowed out of my cupped palms.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Love, Men, Hate, Fear

“You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“All I can think of is the emaciated bodies of children on our kitchen table as my mother prescribes what the parent's can't give. More food.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Children, Food, Thinking, Parent

“Who is Alice?" asked mother.
"Alice is somebody that nobody can see," said Frances. "And that is why she does not have a birthday. So I am singing Happy Thursday to her." - Frances the badger”

Russell Hoban (1925–2011) American British novelist, children's writer and illustrator

Source: A Birthday for Frances

Happiness, Birthday, Singing

“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet