141 Heartwarming Mother Quotes

July 26, 2024, 1:47 p.m.

141 Heartwarming Mother Quotes

Motherhood is a journey filled with love, sacrifice, and countless memorable moments that shape our lives in profound ways. Whether it's the warmth of her embrace, the wisdom in her words, or the unwavering support she offers, mothers bring a unique and irreplaceable touch to our lives. To celebrate this extraordinary bond, we've curated a collection of 141 heartwarming quotes that reflect the beauty and depth of a mother's love. These quotes are designed to inspire, comfort, and remind us of the special place mothers hold in our hearts.

1. “I ask you, what good is a big picture window and the lavish appointments and a priceless decor in a home if there is no mother there?” - Spencer W. Kimball

2. “The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married. I don't know, but until your mom dies it seems like all the other women in your life can never be more than just your mistress.” - Chuck Palahniuk

3. “No man is poor who has a Godly mother.” - Abraham Lincoln

4. “My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.” - George Washington

5. “My mother's life was way too heavy for me.” - Sue Monk Kidd

6. “Art is the child of nature in whom we trace the features of the mothers face.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

7. “Ordinarily my mom just sunk deeper into her corner of the couch and ignored it. She had succesfully ignored a quarter of a century of entropy and decay, had sat peacefully crunching popcorn and drinking soda while the house fell down around us. If I had to guess the number of books she read during that time, I would place the number at somewhere in the neighborhood of forty thousand.” - Haven Kimmel

8. “If you can't go back to your mother's womb, you'd better learn to be a good fighter.” - Anchee Min

9. “God know that a mother need fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul.” - Phyllis McGinley

10. “Turn off the light," she says as she walks away, creating a small woosh that smells sweet and chemical. It makes me sad because it's the smell she makes when she's leaving.” - Augusten Burroughs

11. “I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple.” - Janet Fitch

12. “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers... (Matthew 12:48)” - Anonymous

13. “I don't know what it is about food your mother makes for you, especially when it's something that anyone can make - pancakes, meat loaf, tuna salad - but it carries a certain taste of memory.” - Mitch Albom

14. “But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begin.” - Mitch Albom

15. “It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters. We become enamored with men’s theories such as the idea of preschool training outside the home for young children. Not only does this put added pressure on the budget, but it places young children in an environment away from mother’s influence. Too often the pressure for popularity, on children and teens, places an economic burden on the income of the father, so mother feels she must go to work to satisfy her children’s needs. That decision can be most shortsighted. It is mother’s influence during the crucial formative years that forms a child’s basic character. Home is the place where a child learns faith, feels love, and thereby learns from mother’s loving example to choose righteousness. How vital are mother’s influence and teaching in the home—and how apparent when neglected!” - Ezra Taft Benson

16. “Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as the way they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters.” - Virginia Woolf

17. “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

18. “It has been a week since Ami died and this morning I woke suddenly hours before dawn, indeed the same hour as when my mother died. It was not a dream that woke me, but a thought. And with that thought I could swear I heard Ami's voice. But I am not frightened. I am joyous. Joyous with realization. For I cannot help but think what a lucky person I am. Imagine that in all the eons of time, in all the possible universes of which Dara speaks, of all the stars in the heavens, Ami and I came together for one brief and shining sliver of time. I stop. I think. Supposing in the grand infinity of this universe two particles of life, Ami and me, swirl endlessly like grains of sand in the oceans of the world -- how much of a chance is there for these two particles, these two grains of sand, to collide, to rest briefly together... at the same moment in time? That is what happened with Ami and me... this miracle of chance.” - Kathryn Lasky

19. “How do we know we're not people in a movie?' she asked.I looked at her not knowing how to reply.Mama, [...] how do we know that things are real?'Great. Now we have a junior existentialist in the house.Well, we don't know. We just have to hope that what we think is real is real.'But how do we know?' she asked, insistently.Ah, a scientist, who wants empirical evidence.We don't know. We just have to hope.'Mama, how do we know things aren't a dream? You know, how sometimes life feels like a dream? Do you ever feel that way?'Yes, sweetie, I feel that way all the time.” - Julie Metz

20. “When you feel neglected, think of the female salmon, who lays 3,000,000 eggs but no one remembers her on Mother's Day” - Sam Ewing

21. “A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” - Washington Irving

22. “The Simple PathSilence is PrayerPrayer is FaithFaith is LoveLove is ServiceThe Fruit of Service is Peace” - Mother Teresa

23. “But will you not have a house to care for? Meals to cook? Children whining for this or that? Will you have time for the work?" "I'll make time," I promised. "The house will not always be so clean, the cooking may be a little hasty, and the whining children will sit on my lap and I'll sing to them while I work.” - Gloria Whelan

24. “Children are our future we must take care of them with maximum effort. ” - Naomi Campbell

25. “...be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don't pick people's flowers—you might catch something; don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don't like, and that way something bad won't fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?” - Jamaica Kincaid

26. “this is how you smile to someone you don't like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don't like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well, and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming;” - Jamaica Kincaid

27. “But not you, O girl, nor yet his mother,stretched his eyebrows so fierce with expectation.Not for your mouth, you who hold him now,did his lips ripen into these fervent contours.Do you really think your quiet footstepscould have so convulsed him, you who move like dawn wind?True, you startled his heart; but older terrorsrushed into him with that first jolt to his emotions.Call him . . . you'll never quite retrieve him from those dark consorts.Yes, he wants to, he escapes; relieved, he makes a homein your familiar heart, takes root there and begins himself anew.But did he ever begin himself?” - Rainer Maria Rilke

28. “Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.” - Joanne Harris

29. “My mother believed in all superstitions, plus she made some up.” - Donald E. Westlake

30. “Sometimes being a good mother gets in the way of being a good person.” - Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

31. “His mother?" Gracie couldn't believe it. Suzy Denton looked much too young to be his mother. And much too respectable. "But you're not a-" She cut herself off in mid-sentence as she realized what she'd almost let slip.Suzy's wedding ring clicked against the steering wheel as she gave it a hard smack. "I'm going to kill him! He's been telling that hooker story again, hasn't he?” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

32. “Fathers. Mothers. With all their caring and attention. They will f--- you up, every time.” - Chuck Palahniuk

33. “Maybe a mother wasn't what she seemed to be on the surface.” - Jodi Picoult

34. “That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were there, making you laugh even in your darkest hours.” - Kristen Hannah

35. “No matter how much he talked, she never answered him, but he knew she was still there. He knew it was like the soldiers he had read about. They would have an arm or a leg blown off, and for days, even weeks after it happened, they could still feel the arm itching, the leg itching, the mother calling.” - Pat Cunningham Devoto

36. “And even if you hate her, can't stand her, even if she's ruining your life, there's something about her, some romance, some power. She's absolutely herself. No matter how hard you try, you'll never get to her. And when she dies, the world will be flat, too simple, reasonable, fair.” - Mona Simpson

37. “Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me.” - Dorothy Allison

38. “Can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all?" Harry shook his head."Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help." Harry thought. Then he said slowly, "It shows us what we want... whatever we want..." "Yes and no," said Dumbledore quietly. "It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible."The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, why don't you put that admirable cloak back on and get off to bed.” - J.K. Rowling

39. “ wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything.I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.” - Amy Tan

40. “You're the kind of man my mother warned me about.” - Christine Feehan

41. “But a mother-son relationship is not a coequal one, is it? He is lonely with only you just as you are lonely with only him.” - Mary Balogh

42. “I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.” - Janet Fitch

43. “Listen, ah don't wanna speak ill of the dead but have ah told you that mah mother was a great whopping whale of a cunt? Well she was precisely that - a great whopping whale of a hog's cunt with a dirty maggot for a brain.” - Nick Cave

44. “The expression in her eyes was bitter as nightshade. 'You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air between, or each link separately, as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? I've given more thought to this question than you can begin to imagine.” - Janet Fitch

45. “well, I haven't heard from you since you went to pick up the treadmill so I am assuming some big, burly, longshoreman has absconded with you and I'll never see you again. And you didn't even get to run on your treadmill!” - Debbie Grant

46. “After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katherine dug with hard chopping strokes, pulling out wandering jew and oxalis, tossing the uprooted weeds into a black pot beside her.The garden will be beautiful, he thought. But how do the weeds feel about it? Sacrifices must be made.” - Stephen M. Irwin

47. “Dad was on the porch, pacing back and forth in that uneven stride he had on account of having a gimp leg. When he saw, he let out a yelp of delight and started hobbling down the steps towards us. Mom came running out of the house. She sank down on her knees, clasped her hands in front of her, and started praying up to the heavens, thanking the Lord for delivering her children from the flood.It was she who had saved us, she declared, by staying up all night praying. "You get down on your knees and thank your guardian angel," she said. "And thank me, too."Helen and Buster got down and started praying with Mom, but I just stood there looking at them. The way I saw it. I was the one who'd saved us all, not Mom and not some guardian angel. No one was up in that cottonwood tree except the three of us. Dad came alongside me and put his arms around my shoulders."There weren't no guardian angel, Dad," I said. I started explaining how I'd gotten us to the cottonwood tree in time, figuring out how to switch places when our arms got tired and keeping Buster and Helen awake through the long night by quizzing them.Dad squeezed my shoulder. "Well, darling," he said, "maybe the angel was you.” - Jeannette Walls

48. “The sound of thunder awake me, and when I got up, my feet sank into muddy water up to my ankles. Mother took Buster and Helen to high ground to pray, but I stayed behind with Apache and Lupe. We barricaded the door with the rug and started bailing water out the window. Mother came back and begged us to go pray with her on the hilltop. "To heck with praying!" I shouted. "Bail, dammit, bail!"Mom look mortified. I could tell she thought I'd probably doomed us all with my blasphemy, and I was a little shocked at it myself, but with the water rising so fast, the situation was dire. We had lit the kerosene lamp, and we could see the walls of the dugout were beginning to sag inward. If Mom had pitched in and helped, there was a chance we might have been able to save the dugout - not a good chance, but a fighting chance. Apache and Lupe and I couldn't do it on our own, though, and when the ceiling started to cave, we grabbed Mom's walnut headboard and pulled it through the door just as the dugout collapsed in on itself, burying everything.Afterward, I was pretty aggravated with Mom. She kept saying that the flood was God's will and we had to submit to it. But I didn't see things that way. Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail - the gumption to try to save ourselves - isn't that what he wanted us to do?” - Jeannette Walls

49. “Dr. Bone Specialist came in, made me stand up and hobble across the room, checked my reflexes, and then made me lie down on the table. He bent my right knee this way and that, up and down, all the way out to the side and in. Then he did the same with my left leg. He ordered X rays then started to leave the room. I panicked. I MUST GET DRUGS."What can I take for the pain?" I asked him before he got out the door."You can take some over the counter ibuprofen," he suggested. "But I wouldn't take more than nine a day."I choked. Nine a day? I'd been popping forty. Nine a day? Like hell. I couldn't even go to the bathroom on my own, I hadn't slept in three weeks, and my normally sunny cheery disposition had turned into that of a very rabid dog. If I didn't get good drugs and get them now, it was straight to Shooter's World and then Walgreens pharmacy for me."I don't think you understand," I explained. "I can't go to work. I have spent the last four days with my mother who is addicted to QVC, watching jewelry shows, doll shows and make-up shows. I almost ordered a beef-jerky maker! Give me something, or I'm going to use your calf muscles to make the first batch!"Without further ado, he hastily scribbled out a prescription for some codeine and was gone. I was happy.My mother, however, had lost the ability to speak.” - Laurie Notaro

50. “The way Mom saw it, women should let menfolk do the work because it made them feel more manly. That notion only made sense if you had a strong man willing to step up and get things done, and between Dad's gimp, Buster's elaborate excuses, and Apache's tendency to disappear, it was often up to me to keep the place from falling apart. But even when everyone was pitching in, we never got out from under all the work. I loved that ranch, though sometimes it did seem that instead of us owning the place, the place owned us.” - Jeannette Walls

51. “Mothers are inscrutable beings to their sons, always. ("The Higgler")” - A.E. Coppard

52. “When did my house turn into a hangout for every grossly overpaid, terminally pampered professional football player in northern Illinois?""We like it here," Jason said. "It reminds us of home.""Plus, no women around." Leandro Collins, the Bears' first-string tight end emerged from the office munching on a bag of chips. "There's times when you need a rest from the ladies."Annabelle shot out her arm and smacked him in the side of the head. "Don't forget who you're talking to."Leandro had a short fuse, and he'd been known to take out a ref here and there when he didn't like a call, but the tight end merely rubbed the side of his head and grimaced. "Just like my mama.""Mine, too," Tremaine said with happy nod.Annabelle spun on Heath. "Their mother! I'm thirty-one years old, and I remind them of their mothers.""You act like my mother," Sean pointed out, unwisely as it transpired, because he got a swat in the head next.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

53. “[My dad] didn't do much apart from the traditional winning of bread. He didn't take me to get my hair cut or my teeth cleaned; he didn't make the appointments. He didn't shop for my clothes. He didn't make my breakfast, lunch, or dinner. My mom did all of those things, and nobody ever told her when she did them that it made her a good mother.” - Michael Chabon

54. “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.” - Robert A. Heinlein

55. “I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.” - Audrey Niffenegger

56. “one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.” - Audrey Niffenegger

57. “Sometimes she would cry. I was so lonely, she'd say. You have no idea how lonely I was. And I had friends, I was a lucky one, but I was lonely anyway.I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she'd made. I didn't want to live my life on her terms. I didn't want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas. We used to fight about that. I am not your justification for existence, I said her to once.I want her back. I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.” - Margaret Atwood

58. “Psychology researchers now claim that it is important for babies to learn how to stop crying by themselves. Fortunately, many parents still prefer to comfort their babies. If they didn't, we might find ourselves living in a society of very solitary people, who had learned to control thier distress rather than to find strength through sharing it.” - Naomi Stadlen

59. “Babies of around one year old are often active by day and wake frequently at night, for no obvious reason. Then a mother can feel desparate for sleep yet equally desparate to comfort her baby when he needs her at night. I have spoken to many mothers who have sacrificed their own sleep, waking up numerous times every night because their babies cried for them. It seems terrible that these hardworking women think of themselves as failures as a result. Surely a mother who has chosen to sacrifice her sleep deserves respect and admiration for her generous mothering.” - Naomi Stadlen

60. “In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.” - Jodi Picoult

61. “Laborsaving devices do not necessarily save time, but they increase our expectactations of what mothers should accomplish” - Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett

62. “بموت امي..يسقط آخر قميص صوف اغطي به جسدي..آخر قميص حنان..آخر مظلة مطر..وفي الشتاء القادم..ستجدونني اتجول في الشوارع عاريا..” - نزار قباني

63. “You’re very impatient,” Violet said, facing the door. “You always have been.”“I know,” Eloise said, wondering if this was a scolding, and if so, why was her mother choosing to do it now?“I always loved that about you,” Violet said. “I always loved everything about you, of course, but for some reason I always found your impatience especially charming. It was never because you wanted more, it was because you wanted everything.”Eloise wasn’t so sure that sounded like such a good trait.“You wanted everything for everyone, and you wanted to know it all and learn it all, and . . .”For a moment Eloise thought her mother might be done, but then Violet turned around and added, “You’ve never been satisfied with second-best, and that’s good, Eloise. I’m glad you never married any of those men who proposed in London. None of them would have made you happy. Content, maybe, but not happy.”Eloise felt her eyes widen with surprise.“But don’t let your impatience become all that you are,” Violet said softly. “Because it isn’t, you know. There’s a great deal more to you, but I think sometimes you forget that.” She smiled, the gentle, wise smile of a mother saying goodbye to her daughter.” - Julia Quinn

64. “. . . I do not tell you often enough, dear Mother, how very grateful I am that I am yours. It is a rare parent who would offer a child such latitude and understanding. It is an even rarer one who calls a daughter friend. I do love you, dear Mama.” - Julia Quinn

65. “A dim antagonism gathered force within him and darkened his mind as a cloud against her disloyalty: and when it passed, cloudlike, leaving his mind serene and dutiful towards her again, he was made aware dimly and without regret of a first noiseless sundering of their lives.” - James Joyce

66. “Sydney's the kind of port that leaves a mark on a sailor," the old man mused. "Really?" Haakon said, wondering what the man meant. "It did on me," he said, opening up his shirt to display his chest. It was covered with tattoos! At the top, SYDNEY was printed in elaborate red and blue letters. Beneath that was an enticing selection of names and dates. "Mary, 1838...Adella, 1840..." The old sailor began laughing. "Beatrice, 1843...Helen, 1846." And then finally, "Mother." There was no date after "Mother." "Mothers you love forever," he said. Everybody laughed then, including Haakon, though the thought brought some sadness to his heart. He did love his mother forever, and he missed her as well.” - Bonnie Bryant Hiller

67. “I like it when my mother smiles. And I especially like it when I make her smile.” - Adriana Trigiani

68. “Me acordé de lo que me había dicho mi madre: "Allá me oirás mejor. Estaré más cerca de ti. Encontrarás más cercana la voz de mis recuerdos que la de mi muerte, si es que alguna vez la muerte ha tenido alguna voz." Mi madre... La viva.” - Juan Rulfo

69. “كم أشتهي أن أكون ابنة أمي فقط ، و لا أحد لي سواها” - واسيني الأعرج

70. “The best love in the world, is the love of a man. The love of a man who came from your womb, the love of your son! I don't have a daughter, but maybe the love of a daughter is the best, too. I am first and foremost me, but right after that, I am a mother. The best thing that I can ever be, is me. But the best gift that I will ever have, is being a mother.” - C. JoyBell C.

71. “You are evidence of your mother's strength, especially if you are a rebellious knucklehead and regardless she has always maintained her sanity.” - Criss Jami

72. “I'm convinced that most men don't know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. How many people blame God for man's atrocities, but wouldn't dream of imprisoning a mother for her son's crime?” - Criss Jami

73. “What she did have, after raising two children, was the equivalent of a PhD in mothering and my undying respect.” - Barbara Delinsky

74. “I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.” - Mitch Albom

75. “Memory for most is a kind of afterlife; for my mother, it is another form of life.” - Fern Schumer Chapman

76. “Think of your mother and smile for all of the good precious moments.” - Ana Monnar

77. “We want Max to... breed. To produce heirs. Who will govern the world after she dies."Dead silence for quite some time. We all stared at Dr. Hans, our jaws dropped to various levels. Our lives had reached a new low of inhumanity.My face flushed. Part of me had assumed, hoped, that if Fang and I lived long enough, we would get married. Maybe have a little flock of our own. But i really hadn't planned it all out. And he was gone now, anyway. How could I possibly ever find someone...My eyes scanned Dylan's face, I saw his discomfort."Oh, no," I said in horror."Yes," Angel confirmed. "Freaking unbelievable.” - James Patterson

78. “How could a mother who boils water for pasta leave two little girls behind?” - Jandy Nelson

79. “I love you every day,Mom” - Mitch Albom

80. “I went to bed feeling melancholy, wishing I could havepoured out all my fears and insecurities to my mom. Wasn’tthat what normal mothers and daughters did?” - Richelle Mead

81. “In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.” - N.K. Jemisin

82. “There is no one who takes care of us as lovingly as our mother does. She is our living God.” - Mohtasham Usmani

83. “I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.” - Lionel Shriver

84. “I had spent my childhood and the better part of my early adulthood trying to understand my mother. She had been an extraordinarily difficult person, spiteful and full of rage, with a temper that could flare, seemingly out of nowhere, scorching everything and everyone who got in its way. [pp. 40-41]” - Dani Shapiro

85. “I had no illusions that now, in some final and dramatic flash of revelation, we would understand one another. We were done. It was a fact of my life--intractable and sad--that our relationship had been a failure. Still, with her prognosis came one last chance to be her daughter. [p. 163]” - Dani Shapiro

86. “Gone was the reflexive need to see the worst in things. Before the tumors took her life, they gave her a few moments of grace.” - Dani Shapiro

87. “We stayed all day long. We closed our eyes and paryed, which we had not doen together in a long time. The nurse came in and out of the room. Everything felt awful and I wondered why the whole world didn't seem to notice how bad things really were. I thought of how I'd gotten used to awful, how after my dad died the planets kept on spinning and I got up and ate breakfast every morning and kept going to school. Something happens and it's terrible and you think you can't live another day, but then your mother gets used to it and you get used to it and you both keep on living, and you're not sure if that getting-used-to-things is good or the way life should be.” - Margaret McMullan

88. “But it's not healthy!” replied the Hag. “A mortal and a god sharing the same flesh?”“You know, this isn't why we're here. I can get abuse pretty much wherever.”“Yeah,” sighed the Maid, “but I bet a tenner I can make you cry in half a minute.” - Kate Griffin

89. “You may have tangible wealth untold; caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be. I had a mother who read to me.” - Strickland Gillian

90. “I prayed for my heart to soften, to forgive her, and love her for what she did give me--life, great values, a lot of tennis lessons, and the best she could do. Unfortunately, the best she could do was terrible, thee the Minister of Silly Walks trying to raise an extremely sensitive young girl, and my heart remained hardened toward her. [p. 46]” - Anne Lamott

91. “[Everyone needs] a woman who'll listen, take your side, tell the truth - or not, as you need it. A woman you can count on, no matter what, and who'll love you no matter how much you screw up.” - Nora Roberts

92. “Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other. The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.” - Adrienne Rich

93. “Maybe it's just a daughter's job to piss off her mother.” - Chuck Palahniuk

94. “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.” - Claire/Mia Fontaine

95. “Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.” - Mitch Albom

96. “Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there.” - Bernie Mcgill

97. “Seorang ibu akan selalu khawatir memikirkan anaknya, setiap hari selama hidupnya.” - Kate Kerrigan

98. “I'll teach you," Tiger Lily offered with a shrug of her shoulders."Did your mother teach you?" he asked."I don't have a mother," she said. "Like you."For some reason, Peter was glad to hear it.” - Jodi Lynn Anderson

99. “In the back of the fridge I checked out some stewed apples destined to fester. I examined them closely and reckoned they had only a day to go, even by my standards. I spooned the apples into tiny bowls, tossed in some dried fruit and sprinkled them with crumble topping. Delicious, they said that night, scraping the bowls so clean they hardly needed to go in the dishwasher. The fools.” - Helen Brown

100. “She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. Theorem, anti-theorem, corollary, anti-corollary. Underline it twice. It’s all there in the numbers. Listen to your mother. Listen to me, Joshua. Look me in the eyes. I have something to tell you.” - colum mccann

101. “I know you think I should be home taking care of my family. That maybe I’d be distracted or I wouldn’t be as committed as the rest of you, but who’s more committed: the person with something to lose, or the people who’ve got nothing left?” - Bill Blais

102. “If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices.” - Anne Brontë

103. “If you would really study my pleasure, mother, you must consider your own comfort and convenience a little more than you do.” - Anne Brontë

104. “My mother is my life's breath.” - Muhammad Faisal Yaqoob

105. “And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I'm betting some of those women would like to do great things of their own.” - Jessica Valenti

106. “Given the reality of unintended parenthood and parental unhappiness, one would think that women and men who make the decision not to have children - who are deliberate and thoughtful about the choice to bring another person into the world - would be seen as less selfish than those who unthinkingly have children. Yet the stigma remains.” - Jessica Valenti

107. “It's just hard now because... you're jealous. But your heart is so generous and warm, it will melt the bad feelings away." I am 100 percent positive that my mom is the wisest mother in the world.” - Jane O'Connor

108. “What do you think was the first sound to become a word, a meaning?...I imagined two people without words, unable to speak to each other. I imagined the need: The color of the sky that meant 'storm.' The smell of fire taht meant 'Flee.' The sound of a tiger about to pounce. Who would worry about these things?And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. For a long time, that was the only word the baby needed. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.” - Amy Tan

109. “The desires for both a good experience and a healthy baby are very much connected, and there is nothing wrong with wanting both!” - Jennetta Billhimer

110. “For Sayonara, literally translated, 'Since it must be so,' of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado 'Till we meet again,' any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking Farewell. Farewell is a father's good-by. It is - 'Go out in the world and do well, my son.' It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While Good-by ('God be with you') and Adios say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. 'You must not go - I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God's hand will over you' and even - underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible - 'I will be with you; I will watch you - always.' It is a mother's good-by. But Sayonara says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, 'Sayonara.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

111. “Μια αιτία για τη δημιουργία νεύρωσης μπορεί να βρεθεί στο γεγονός ότι το παιδί έχει μια μητέρα που το αγαπάει μεν αλλά είναι υπερβολικά επιεικής ή αυταρχική απέναντί του κι έναν πατέρα αδύνατο και αδιάφορο. Σ'αυτήν την περίπτωση το παιδί μπορεί να παραμείνει προσκολλημένο σε μαι πρώιμη μητρική πρόσδεση και να εξελιχθεί σε ένα άτομο που εξαρτάται από τη μητέρα, νιώθει αδύναμο και έχει τις χαρακτηριστικές τάσεις του ανθρώπου-αποδέκτη που έχει ανάγκη να παίρνει, να προστατεύεται, να φροντίζεται, και που του λείπουν οι πατρικές ιδιότητες -πειθαρχία, ανεξαρτησία, ικανότητα να κατακτήσει τη ζωή μόνος του.” - Έριχ Φρομ

112. “I get out of the car, and I'm blasted by the stench of body odor. Cricket is beside me, and he's talking, but his words don't reach my ears.Because it's my mother.Smelling.On my porch.” - Stephanie Perkins

113. “Sometimes it's better to live without a mother than not to live at all.” - Glenda Millard

114. “... I'll tell her about Tia. I'll tell her how beautiful she was and how brave. And I'll tell her the most important thing of all: that her mother loved her better than her life.” - Glenda Millard

115. “To Scarlett, there was something breath-taking about Ellen O'Hara, a miracle that lived in the house with her and awed her and charmed and soothed her.” - Margaret Mitchell

116. “When I think of Tomodachi, I think of your mother. Your mother, she too lose her baby. She lose you. That very sad thing for her. Maybe she come looking, and she not find you. You not there when she come. She think you dead for ever. But she see you in her mind. Now as I speak maybe she see you in her mind. You always there. I know. I have son too. I have Michiya. He always in my head. Like Kimi. They dead for sure, but they in my head. They in my head forever.” - Michael Morpurgo

117. “once ruffle-skirted vanity table where I primped at thirteen, opening drawers to a private chaos of eyeshadows lavender teal sky-blue, swarms of hair pins pony tail fasteners, stashes of powders, colonies of tiny lipsticks (p.39)” - Barbara Blatner

118. “blue-gold sky, fresh cloud, emerald-black mountain, trees on rocky ledges, on the summit, the tiny pin of a telephone tower-all brilliantly clear, in shadow and out. and on and through everything everywhere the sun shines without reservation (p. 97)” - Barbara Blatner

119. “I could simply kill you now, get it over with, who would know the difference? I could easily kick you in, stove you under, for all those times, mean on gin, you rammed words into my belly. (p. 52)” - Barbara Blatner

120. “She has that voraciousness about children. She swoops in on them. Even I, in public was a beloved child. She'd parade me into town, smiling and teasing me, tickling me as she spoke with people on the sidewalks. When we got home, she'd trail off to her room like an unfinished sentence, and I would sit outside with my face pressed against her door, and replay the day in my head, searching for clues to what I had done to displease her.I have one memory that catches in me like a nasty clump of blood. Marian was dead about two years, and my mother had a cluster of friends come over for afternoon drinks. For hours, the child was cooed over, smothered with red lipstick kisses, tidied up with tissues, then lipstick smacked again. I was suppose to be reading in my room, but I sat at the top of the stairs watching. My mother finally was handed the baby, and she cuddled it ferociously. Oh, how, wonderful it is to hold a baby again! Adora jiggled it on her knee, walked it around the rooms, whispered to it, and I looked down from above like a spiteful little god, the back of my hand placed against my face, imagining how it felt to be cheek to cheek with my mother.” - Gillian Flynn

121. “The Guardians of the Overhead hold the most power in Heaven. They have the power to not only heal, but project. They can influence other Healers around them to make sure that Healer makes better judgment choices in life. Following them is the royal family that rules Heavens dynasty—” “The Caspian family,” I cut in happy that I knew the answer. To know that my family was the second most powerful family in Heaven’s dynasty suddenly made me feel powerful, even though my powers have not come in yet. “Yes,” Mother agreed with friendlies to her voice. “Although we are better known as the Nobles of Heaven. We have the ability to heal others, as well as control ones emotions. As you have noticed, your father and I are most powerful in the day time. That is when our power shines brightest. As the Nobles of Heaven, your father has the ability to control how a Healer acts. If one misbehaves, it is a Nobles job to straighten them up for the good of Heaven. Just by a single command, your father can change that Healers action. For if one Healer acts out, it is a chain reaction. Without consequence, Lumen will be unbalanced.” - B.C. Doyle

122. “I will always love my mother for who she is and everything she does.” - Tammy-Louise Wilkins

123. “It gave her a sudden sense that it was now her turn to grow old, to find the world changing, sliding away from the old ways of being and behaving, so that you were gradually a stranger to the place you lived in. The woman priest with jogging clothes and a BlackBerry gave Mary a glimpse of what life must have been like for her mother as she grew older.” - John Lanchester

124. “My mother, my psychiatrist and an assortment of sedatives eventually convinced me I was delusional.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

125. “To my father, who told me the stories that matter. To my mother, who taught me to remember them.” - Marita Golden

126. “That’s what love is like: mother of the greatest bliss and stepmother of the most tragic misery.” - Stefanos Livos

127. “I want to go back to the tell-me-again times when I slept in her bed and we were everything together. When I was everything to her. Everything she needed.” - Erica Lorraine Scheidt

128. “Son, I hope your opinion of your mother hasn’t lessened, knowing what you now know.” Gavin glanced up; incredulity skewed his eyebrows. His expression appeared both stunned and appalled. “Never, Father! I love her! It makes no difference to me where she came from.” The man nodded, a show of relief in his features. His large hand, soft in touch, went to brush a string of hair away from his wife’s peaceful profile. “Your mother loves you too, son, more than anything in the world. She worries about you, day and night.” That sentiment stirred something profoundly pleasant inside the boy. He grinned at the internal warmth it created.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

129. “If I were asked to define Motherhood. I would have defined it as Love in its purest form. Unconditional Love. ~~ Revathi Sankaran” - Revathi Sankaran

130. “I was always an unusual girl.My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean.” - Lana Del Rey

131. “In my experience, anybody besides your mom that feeds you is going to want something in exchange for it.” - Karen Marie Moning

132. “Every woman is a gift when she becomes a daughter, Every woman is beautiful when she becomes a lover, Every woman is special when she becomes a wife, Every woman is a god when she becomes a Mother” - Vivek Thangaswamy

133. “My life has been like a battlefield, a war that could never be won unless I had her with me, and the day she died my battlefront stepped down and threw away their shields, allowing the gunshots to slip through the second her heart stopped beating. From that moment onwards I was left wounded, and for those seventeen years without her my wounds bled-wounds no stitch could ever repair.” - Rebecah McManus

134. “To see her, amid all of it. To see that contentment and beauty were not unattainable things.” - Khaled Hosseini

135. “She stood in the mirror portrait very near Margaret, close next to her, good as a mother or a friend.” - Ida Hattemer-Higgins

136. “My mom smiled at me. Her smile kind of hugged me.” - R.J. Palacio

137. “Motherhood is when eating chicken soup; the kids get the chicken and you get the soup and you would still feel happily stuffed.” - Sandra Chami Kassis

138. “The thing I miss most from home, is having a home.” - Anthony Liccione

139. “I couldn't be certain whether their eagerness to leave was fueled by their desire to see more fire or to get away from my mother. I wouldn't have blamed them at all if it was the latter - most people went to great lengths to avoid her on a regular basis, myself and my father included.” - Heather James

140. “Sam and Caine were left standing side by side, bruised and battered, to stare over Penny's sickening corpse, at the face of their mother.” - Michael Grant

141. “Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway. She kisses Luisa’s forehead. Luisa frowns, suspiciously, like a teenager. “What?” - David Mitchell