Grandmother Quotes

“It is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.”

“Looking handsome in your fine uniforms. Dressing up and doing the terrible, terrible things you do. Its makes me ashamed.”

“She glared, daring us to pay her a compliment. But the cat had our tongues. Mary Alice stared up at her, transfixed. Was she seeing herself fifty years hence? ”

“When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog followed a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I cried over it…I spent my life learning to feel less.”

“She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.”

“He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right.”

″‘[I]t would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me.’ Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.”

“June Star didn’t think it was any good. She said she wouldn’t marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out.”

″ ‘We’ve had an ACCIDENT!’ the children screamed in a frenzy of delight. ‘But nobody’s killed,’ June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car…”

″ ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘you shouldn’t call yourself The Misfit because I know you’re a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell.’ ”

“There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. ‘Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain’t punished at all?’ ”

“Jesus!” the old lady cried. “You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!”

“The grandmother noticed how thin his shoulder blades were just behind his hat because she was standing up looking down on him. ‘Do you ever pray?’ she asked. [The Misfit] shook his head. All she saw was the black hat wiggle between his shoulder blades. ‘Nome,’ he said.”

“You could be honest too if you’d only try. Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time.”

“ ‘In my time,’ said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, ‘children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!’ she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. ‘Wouldn’t that make a picture now?’ ”

″ ‘Hush!’ Bailey yelled, ‘Hush! Everybody shut up and let me handle this!’ He was squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but he didn’t move.”

″ ‘She would of been a good woman,’ The Misfit said, ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.’ ”

“But, remember, it may seem to you a very roundabout way indeed, and you must not doubt the thread. Of one thing you may be sure, that while you hold it, I hold it too.‘”

“We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.′ ‘What is that, grandmother?’ ‘To understand other people.‘”

“I’ve nobody to spin for just at present. I never spin without knowing for whom I am spinning.”

“It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.”

“That was the key to my grandmother’s jewel box, that she got from Florence. It was made of red leather and it fell to bits at last, but she kept the key and gave it to me. She was most terribly poor when she died, poor old sweetie, and kept crying because she had nothing to leave me, so in the end I said I’d rather have this little key than all the jewels in the world.”

“Molly is old enough and smart enough to do things on her own, like shopping. When her grandmother sends her to the store for beans, Molly forgets what she’s supposed to buy and gets potatoes instead. When her grandmother asks Molly what happened, Molly tells her that the clerk insisted that she buy the potatoes.”

“My mother is pretty strict with me. My grandmother tries to put her two cents’ worth in as well, but Mama hates her butting in. The two of them are forever as loggerheads with each other. Like whenever school camp comes along, it’s fights galore. My grandmother thinks that if a member of our family isn’t looking after me I’ll get raped or murdered. She accuses my mother of being a bad mother for not caring enough and letting me go.”

In South Africa, a young black boy shares a special day with his grandmother when they go into the city on a shopping trip.

“The wool is ready to be spun into yarn,′ said Pelle’s mother. ‘I think Grandmother will do this for you.’ So Pelle gathered all the wool in a big basket. He carried the basket of wool to his grandmother.”