mothers Quotes

“Led by her mother’s hand, she had drawn nearer to the Friend who always welcomes every child with a love stronger than that of any father, tenderer than that of any mother.”

“The love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.”

“Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?” Nothing, precious,” she said; “they are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children.”

“Mother has said that she sees us more as friends than as daughters. That’s all very nice, of course, except that a friend can’t take the place of a mother. I need my mother to set a good example and be a person I can respect, but in most matters, she’s an example of what not to do.”

“I’ll never tell about it,” he answered. “But I says to mother, ‘Mother,’ I says, ‘I got a secret to keep. It’s not a bad ‘un, tha’ knows that. It’s no worse than hidin’ where a bird’s nest is. Tha’ doesn’t mind it, does tha’?‘” Mary always wanted to hear about mother. “What did she say?” she asked, not at all afraid to hear. Dickon grinned sweet-temperedly. “It was just like her, what she said,” he answered. “She give my head a bit of a rub an’ laughed an’ she says, ‘Eh, lad, tha’ can have all th’ secrets tha’ likes. I’ve knowed thee twelve year’.‘”

“I have seen the man I loved preparing to become the murderer of my son!” She said these words with such overwhelming grief, in such a desperate voice, that when he heard it a sob rose in the count’s throat. The lion was tamed, the avenging angel overcome.

The fiercest animals are disarmed by a tribute to their young. The mother thanked her and invited her to sit on the bench by the door while she herself remained seated on the step.

“Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother.”

“Are you my mother?”

″ I want to go home! I want my mother!”

“Mississippi is like my mother. I am allowed to complain about her all I want, but God help the person who raises an ill word about her around me, unless she is their mother too.”

“Where is my mother?”

“That night I lay in bed and thought about dying and going to be with my mother in paradise. I would meet her saying, ‘Mother, forgive. Please forgive,’ and she would kiss my skin till it grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame. She would tell me this for the first ten thousand years.”

“And it is I, Raksha [the Demon], who answer. The man’s cub is mine, Lungri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs—frog-eater—fish-killer, he shall hunt thee!”

“She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken.”

“She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she has practiced denying them in herself.”

“And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.”

“Our mother said she was like Mary, with her heart on the outside of her chest.”

“Egg laying is the main thing, Lily. She’s the mother of every bee in the hive, and they all depend on her to keep it going. I don’t care what their job is—they know the queen is their mother. She’s the mother of thousands.”

“I live in a hive of darkness, and you are my mother, I told her. You are the mother of thousands.”

″. . . Big Mama kept bees, too, right out there in the same spot they’re in today. Nobody around here had ever seen a lady beekeeper till her. She liked to tell everybody that women made the best beekeepers, ‘cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. ‘It comes from years of loving children and husbands,’ she’d say.”

“She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.”

“I am a mother and mothers don’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of their children, even when they are afraid, even when their children are adults.”

“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. ”

“The at-home mother’s life: it was a race with no finish line.”

“In his face, I see the whole of my life. I see a baby who came to me long after I’d given up … and a hint of the beauty I once had. I see … my life in his eyes.”

“There was a pause, then more words appeared—words I hadn’t known I needed to hear, but once I saw them, I realized I’d been searching my whole life for them. *You were my child. I should have protected you.* I lived a lifetime in the moment I read those lines, a life that was not the one I had actually lived. I became a different person, who remembered a different childhood. I didn’t understand the magic of those words then, and I don’t understand it now. I know only this: that when my mother told me she had not been the mother to me that she wished she’d been, she became that mother for the first time.”

“We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked.”

“But stronger than all was maternal love, wrought into a paroxysm of frenzy by the near approach of a fearful danger. Her boy was old enough to have walked by her side, and, in an indifferent case, she would only have led him by the hand; but now the bare thought of putting him out of her arms made her shudder, and she strained him to her bosom with a convulsive grasp, as she went rapidly forward.”

“He will live at our house. He will grow and grow. Will our mother like this? We don’t know.”

“Not one of them is like another. Don’t ask us why. Go ask your mother.”

Mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.”

“My mother’s death was brave. I remember how calm she was, how determined. It isn’t just brave that she died for me; it is brave that she did it without announcing it, without hesitation, and without appearing to consider another option.”

“Scrubbing the floor when no one else wanted to was something that my mother would have done. If I can’t be with her, the least I can do is act like her sometimes.”

“Hey don’t get me wrong, I’m not a mama’s boy or anything. It’s totally manly and normal for me to cling to a letter from my mom.”

When [bait fishermen] come back home they don’t even kiss their mothers on the front porch before they’re in the back garden with a red Hills Bros. coffee can digging for angleworms.

“If all the lights in her son’s house were out, she opened his bedroom window, crawled across the floor, and looked up over the side of his bed. If that great big man was really asleep she picked him up and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.”

“Sometimes his mother wanted to sell him to the zoo!”

“A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.”

“Sometimes his mother felt like she was in a zoo!”

“The son went to his mother. He picked her up and rocked her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.”

“I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, As long as I’m living my Mommy you’ll be.”

“I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, As long as I’m living, My baby you’ll be.”

“Well, that mother, she got older. She got older and older and older.”

“The mysterious bond of mother and child was not a mystery to me any longer. There was no bond greater than one that required your life for another’s.”

“I learned to love my son without wanting to possess him and I learned how to teach him to teach himself.”

“When the queen at last set down the parchment and met her daughter’s eyes, Ani was expecting an accusing stare and was surprised by the sorrow that weighed down her features. She could not tell if the sorrow was for her father or for her. A thought buzzed in Ani’s head: I do not know this woman at all. Her stomach turned uneasily.”

“I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I’d felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he’d never even seen me . . .”

“As I lay down on my mat and pulled the blanket up about my neck, it seemed to me that if this was the case, the demoness would surely be reborn as a rich Tang woman in her next life. I even toyed with the idea that perhaps we had been close to each other in some former life – a mother and child, even.”

“We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death.”

“Mom sat there for the longest time, biting her cheek. Then she said, “People do change, you know. Maybe he’s had some revelations lately, too. And frankly, any boy who tries to kiss a girl in front of a room full of other kids does not sound like a coward to me.” She stroked my hair and whispered, “Maybe there’s more to Bryce Loski than you know.”

“In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.”

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

“The small fox ran back along the tunnel as fast as he could, carrying the three plump hens. He was exploding with joy. ‘Just wait!’ he kept thinking, ‘just wait till Mummy sees these!’ He had a long way to run but he never stopped once on the way and he came bursting in upon Mrs. Fox. ‘Mummy!’ he cried, out of breath. ‘Look, Mummy, look! Wake up and see what I’ve brought you!’ Mrs. Fox, who was weaker than ever now from lack of food, opened one eye and looked at the hens. ‘I’m dreaming,’ she murmured and closed the eye again.”

“Suddenly his mother let out a great shuddering sob. ‘O my God. O my God.’ She said it over and over, her head down on her arms. His father moved to put his arm around her awkwardly, but he didn’t take his eyes off Jess.”

“As [Ekwefi] buried one child after another her sorrow gave way to the despair and then to grim resignation. The birth of her children, which should be a woman’s crowning glory, became for Ekwefi mere physical agony devoid of promise. The naming ceremony after seven market weeks became an empty ritual.”

“He wondered what it would be like to have a mother whose stories were inside her head instead of marching across the television screen all day long.”

“Mothers! That word’s like a blow! Why am I so affected by it?”

“To resist occupation, whether you’re a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democracy and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line.”

“To my dear and honored Mother, whose life, no less than her pen, has been devoted to the welfare of others, this little book is affectionately dedicated.”

“I remembered suddenly the way he used to talk to his mother. If he couldn’t get what he wanted from her gently, he stopped being gentle. Why not? She always forgave him. ”

“She hadn’t tied her scarf around her head yet this morning, and her bare scalp looked too soft, too fragile in the morning light, like a baby’s. It made Conor’s stomach hurt to see it.”

“I think the preacher thinks about my mama all the time, too. He’s still in love with her...But he doesn’t tell me that. He won’t talk to me about her at all.”

“I stayed where I was and studied the tree. I wondered if my mama, wherever she was, had a tree full of bottles; and I wondered if I was a ghost to her, the same way she sometimes seemed like a ghost to me”

“When a mother dies, a daughter’s mourning never completely ends.”

″‘See,’ I said, ‘you don’t have any family and neither do I. I’ve got the preacher, of course. But I don’t have a mama. I mean I have one, but I don’t know where she is. She left when I was three years old. I can’t hardly remember her. And I bet you don’t remember your mama much either. So we’re almost like orphans.‘”

“I thought she might change her mind, or at least tell me when she was leaving. But she did neither of those things. She left me a letter which explained that if she said good-bye, it would be too terribly painful and it would sound too permanent. She wanted me to know that she would think of me every minute and that she would be back before the tulips bloomed.”

″‘She loved you very much.’ ‘But she left me,’ I told him. ‘She left us,’ said the preacher softly...‘She packed her bags and left us, and she didn’t leave one thing behind.‘”

“When a mother dies, a daughter grieves. And then her life moves on. She does, thankfully, feel happiness again.”

“But the missing her, the wanting her, the wishing she were still here—I will not lie to you, although you probably already know. That part never ends.”

“There is an emptiness inside of me -- a void that will never be filled. No one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. There is no love as pure, unconditional and strong as a mother’s love. And I will never be loved that way again.”

″‘When I told you your mama took everything with her, I forgot one thing, one very important thing she left behind.’ ‘What?’ I asked. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Thank God your mama left me you.‘”

“When a daughter loses a mother, the intervals between grief responses lengthen over time, but her longing never disappears. It always hovers at the edge of her awareness, prepared to surface at any time, in any place, in the least expected ways.”

“A mother’s death also means the loss of the consistent, supportive family system that once supplied her with a secure home base, she then has to develop her self-confidence and self-esteem through alternate means.”

“I also keep most of my pain, anger and feelings inside. I refuse to be vulnerable to anyone, especially my husband. The only people who see that more emotional or softer side are my children. That too because of my mother.”

“She loses not only her mother but also the encouragement and revalidation of the self she needs as well as the real sharing she would want to do with her mother at that time.”

“Joana still had her mother. Reuniting with her mother was her motivation. She would slay dragons to get to her. Mother was anchor. Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean.”

″‘I hate her,’ I said, and waited for the blow to fall. But Doctor Nolan only smiled at me as if something had pleased her very, very much and said, ‘I suppose you do.‘”

“The mother of Gilgamish, she that knows all things.”

“I turned and caught the briefest of moments in Maxon’s life. His mother, the beautiful Queen Amberly, pushed some stray hairs back into place.”

“All this stuff I’m learning,′ she said, ‘it make me realize that I did have a mother, and all the tragedy she went through. It hurts but I wanna know more, just like I wanna know about my sister. It make me feel closer to them, but I do miss them. I wish they were here.”

“I’m a lady. You might not believe that from my offspring, but I am.”

“I know I’m just a trouble and a burden to you.”

“The gray-green surface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don’t speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish.”

“Oh, and she inexplicably mails me a cactus every Valentine’s Day. And I’m like, ‘Thanks a heap, Coyote Ugly. This cactus-gram stings even worse than your abandonment.‘”

″‘Your mother was a very strong woman, a good mother. She loved you very much, more than her own life. And that’s why you can understand why a mother like this could never forget her other daughters. She knew they were alive, and before she died she wanted to find her daughters in China.‘”

“‘Think about it, Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.’”

“So much went through my head. How families are families, no matter the caste. How mothers all have their own worries to bear.”

“She’d been taking care of his material needs for a good year and a half, and his emotional ones, to the extent he wanted them taken care of, for almost as long. ‘I love him as if I birthed him,’ she said.”

“It was your mother chopping wood. There you see your mother – getting up early; cooking meals all day long; washing and ironing; – and still she has to go out in the back yard and chop wood. I suppose she just got tired of asking you. She just gave up and decided it was easier to do it herself. And you eat her meals, and put on the clothes she keeps nice for you, and you run off and play baseball . . .”

″[Ma] gets sick of things fast, it’s from being an adult.”

“Life is strange now. Before even when she lay in bed looking frail and weak she still managed to make me feel safe. Mothers do that don’t they? Their very presence can help. And even if I ended up mothering her in the final days, she still was taking care of me. I miss her.”

“When Nath had been born, then Lydia, Marilyn had not informed her mother, had not even sent a photograph. What was there to say? She and James had never discussed what her mother had said about their marriage that last day: it’s not right. She had not ever wanted to think of it again. So when James came home that night, she said simply, “My mother died.” Then she turned back to the stove and added, “And the lawn needs mowing,” and he understood: they would not talk about it.”

“Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers.”

“What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?”

“She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from her childhood; but she has a mother’s instincts, and is capable of a mother’s agonies.”

“You can’t visit the sins of the father upon the child.”

“I took onto Raynell like she was all them babies I had wanted and never had. . . . Like I’d been blessed to relive a part of my life. And if the lord see fit to keep up my strength . . . I’m gonna do her just like your daddy did you . . . I’m gonna give her the best of what’s in me.”

″‘Pooh – I have as much of mother as father in me!’ she said. ‘All my prettiness comes from her, and she was only a dairymaid.‘”

“A child embarrassed by his mother - is just a child who hasn’t lived long enough.”

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

″ ‘Can it think?’ ‘Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise,’ said the Creator.”

“I don’t know what it is about food your mother makes for you, especially when it’s something that anyone can make - but it carries a certain taste of memory.”

“She had a bottomless well of love for me. Her only flaw was that she didn’t make me work for it.”

“But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.”

″ ‘God,’ said the angel touching his sleeve gently, ‘Get some rest tomorrow...’ ‘I can’t,’ said God, ‘I’m so close to creating something so close to myself.’ ”

“The angel shook her head slowly and said. ‘Six pairs of hands.... no way.’ ‘It’s not the hands that are causing me problems,’ God remarked, ‘it’s the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have.’ ”

“Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick...can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger...and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower.”

″ ‘You are a genius,’ said the angel. Somberly, God said, ‘I didn’t put it there.’ ”

″ One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, ‘What are you kids doing in there?’ when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn’t but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say. ‘I understand and I love you’ without so much as uttering a word.”

″ Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek. ‘There’s a leak,’ she pronounced. ‘I told You that You were trying to put too much into this model.’ ‘It’s not a leak,’ said the Lord, ‘It’s a tear.’ ‘What’s it for?’ ‘It’s for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride.’ ”

“When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of ‘overtime’ when the angel appeared and said. ‘You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.’ ”

“And God said, ‘Have you read the specs on this order? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 moveable parts...all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands.’ ”

“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 they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters. Nothing made up for the loss.”

“The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. ‘It’s too soft’ she sighed. ‘But tough!’ said God excitedly. ‘You can imagine what this mother can do or endure.’ ”

“Immediately, Mrs. Ramsey seemed to fold herself together, one petal closed in another, and the whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon itself, so that she had only strength enough to move her finger, in exquisite abandonment to exhaustion”

″ ‘You should leave them,’ I say. ‘It’s not safe for you there.’ I say it because he doesn’t know it. He’s trapped by the same memory of love, of better times, that his mother is, and it isn’t enough.”

“Later Achilles would play the lyre, as Chiron and I listened. My mother’s lyre. He had brought it with him. ‘I wish I had known,’ I said, the first day when he showed it to me.

“Her mother had already abandoned her. Since that day, I’ve had doubts about the so-called ‘maternal instinct.‘”

“When I was little my mother used to get a certain look in her eyes and say, ‘One day you’re going to fall in love.’ I wanted to say, but never said: Not in a million years.”

“Would you ask a mother to sell one of her children?” “Whyever not? They can always make more. Mothers sell their children every day.” “Not the Mother of Dragons.” “Not even for twenty ships?” “Not for a hundred.”

″‘Where are you planning to sleep, the Arctic Circle?’ she asked. I thought, There or maybe the Peruvian Andes, since that’s where Dad once camped. I started to keep a notebook called How to Survive in the Wild.”

“…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.”

“There was the woman I was before my mom died and the one I was now, my old life sitting on the surface of me like a bruise.”

“I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being, apart from my mother, who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me.”

“You don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life . . . For a long time I let her say what she wanted about me, and what was worse, for a long time I believed her.”

“I wasn’t afraid anymore. I thought of that look on my mother’s face when I’d told her I was ashamed. I thought of that look of love and compassion that she wore as she looked at me.”

“I’m, being the girls’ mother, should understand them more than anyone. But that’s what’s so frightening. I don’t know. Once they’re out of you, they’re different, kids are. Leaving their home, they will become another’s.”

“Besides, how should a woman void of reflection be capable of educating her children?”

“Don’t have any silly ideas about soldiers. Soldiers have mothers, you know, and most of us end up as farmers and fishermen like everyone else.”

“I lost their childhood. Sometimes, you feel bad.”

“The train lurches hard from side to side. Enrique holds on with both hands.”

″ Be present in all things and thankful for all things.”

“The conversation is awkward. His mother is a stranger. This is probably expensive.”

“People come here to prosper. You have nothing here. What have you accomplished?”

″‘Dónde está mi mami?’ Enrique cries, over and over. ‘Where is my mom?‘”

“She stares awkwardly down at the kitchen counter. Then, quietly, she tells me about four other children I never knew existed.”

“The train crawls out of the Tapachula station. From here on, he thinks, nothing bad can happen.”

“Jasmín waves with both hands and calls out, “Adiós, mami. Adiós, mami. Adiós, mami.”

″ I do my best because I am counting on you counting on me.”

″ In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.”

“In spite of everything, Enrique has failed again - he will not reach the United States this time, either. He tells himself over and over that he’ll just have to try again.”

“The mother is nineteen, but she doesn’t feel that old.”

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

“To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.”

“Where were my instincts? Isn’t the female of the species hardwired to recognize her own offspring?”

“She looked up at him, her eyes as cold as the eyes of a lioness. This was Juana’s first baby – this was nearly everything there was in Juana’s world. And Kino saw her determination and the music of the family sounded in his head with a steely tone.”

“That’s how Mother told stories. Never enough detail, and she always left you hanging at the end.”

“The encounter with the driver of the red Ferrari showed me the way to discovering what the arena was in which I could apply myself and also to learning how to do that. But it was my mother’s earlier pronouncement that had planted the belief in me that I could attain whatever goals I set for myself.”

“Whatever you do, don’t die. Your children will never forgive you.... So your mother ran away to death. And after that, how could you trust anyone.”

“Losing Moms did break my heart, creating a void in the world where once her smile had been--the sight of which I will miss until the day I die. There was so much more to come that I still wanted to share with her, to make her happy.”

“Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some camomile tea... ‘One table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time.’ ”

“You may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden. Your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. Mcgregor.”

“He did not know what his mother looked like. He went right by her. He did not see her.”

“I did have a mother, I know I did. I have to find her. I will. I WILL!”

“Then he saw a car. Could that old thing be his mother? No it could not.”

″ He told his mother all about his adventures while she took of his wet socks. ”

“I have to find my mother!”

″‘Mother,’ Stellaluna squeaked. ‘Where are you?’ By daybreak, the baby bat could hold on no longer. Down, down again she dropped.”

“Did he have a mother?”

“He looked way, way, up. He saw a big plane. ‘Here I am, Mother,’ ”

″ ‘Yes I know who you are,’ said the baby bird. “You are not a kitten. You are not a hen. You are not a dog. You are not a cow. You are not a boat, or a plane, or a Snort! You are a bird, and you are my mother.”

“llama llama red pajama reads a story with his mama.”

″‘Jacob have I loved …’ Suddenly my stomach flipped. Who was speaking? I couldn’t remember the passage. Was it Isaac, the father of the twins? No, even the Bible said that Isaac had favored Esau. Rebecca, the mother, perhaps? It was her conniving that helped Jacob steal the blessing from his brother. Rebecca—I had hated her from childhood, but somehow I knew that these were not her words...”

“Mamas and papas and uncles and aunts hug their little dears, then dust their pants.”

“Mama Llama’s always near even if she’s not right here.”

“Although she was a widow (her husband had died only the preceding summer), Mrs. Frisby was able, through luck and hard work, to keep her family—there were four of them—happy and well fed.”

“Baby Llama, what a tizzy! Sometimes Mama’s very busy.”

“And it turned out that Mama had been right: things did go more smoothly. Once they got into the good manners habit, they didn’t even have to think about it.”

“Llama llama red pajama waiting waiting for his mama.”

“Llama llama red pajama gets two kissed from his mama, snuggles pillow soft and deep...”

“Llama llama red pajama in the dark without his mama. Eyes wide open, covers drawn...What if Mama Llama’s gone?”

“And suddenly all the puppies were her puppies; she was their mother—just as Pongo had felt he was their father.”

“Ralph really felt sorry for the boy, hampered as he was by his youth and his mother.”

“In the great forest a little elephant is born. His name is Babar. His mother loves him very much. She rocks him to sleep with her trunk while singing softly to him.”

“Mama says she’ll be up soon. Baby Llama hums a tune.”

“Llama llama red pajama hollers loudly for his mama.”

“Think, my dear. We owe it to these people. They’ve come to help us. We must do what we can to help them. And think of our daughter. Isn’t it natural she wants to play her part? When this horror is over, what would you have her say, that she had to stand by and watch while others took all the risks?”

“Mrs. Owens bent down to the baby and extended her arms. “Come now,” she said warmly. “Come to mama”″

“Mothers always fuss about the way you eat. You can hardly eat any way that pleases them.”

″ ‘If you become a little boy and run into a house,’ said the mother bunny, ‘I will become your mother and catch you in my arms and hug you.’ ”

“Last summer when Olivia was little, her mother showed her how to make sand castles.”

″‘I love my mummy!’ said Bill.”

“I looked into her eyes, and saw my own staring back, the same peculiar shade, pale grey, flecked with yellow, rimmed with black. Now I knew the nature of her debt. It had weighed on her conscience for fourteen years. I was looking into the eyes of mother and I knew that I would never see her again.”

“My poor Mum didn’t have any teeth. She’d gone into hospital and they’d taken them all out, every last one. It was because of us kids.”

Basically the story revolves around Lucy (aka the girl who cried wolf), who tells her family about the wolves lurking behind the wallpapers. Her relatives however dismissed her fears as a product of her overactive imagination, and they are actually too engrossed into their own worlds to deal with Lucy: her mother (like any mother) is a personification of domestic order, her oblivious father plays tuba, and her annoying brother plays video games.

“So now it’s both of you! First it’s all warm, warm, warm. Then it’s all soft, soft, soft. Now it’s all nice, nice, nice!”

“I went closer. Flames still crept and licked at the blackened beams. There was no sign of my mother or my sisters. I tried to call out, but my tongue had suddenly become too big for my mouth, and the smoke was choking me and making my eyes stream. The whole village was on fire, but where was everyone?”

“Clarice’s extraordinarily ordinary family is under pressure. Dad keeps muttering about how “there might be a reshuffle going on at work”, while mum spends her life “gribbling about pants on the floor and shoes on the sofa”. And as for her brother, Minal Cricket, he “tends to be utterly a nuisance”.”

“If this is the stone age and mum says the ice age is coming any minute now...how long is an age?”

“I saw it rolling downhill. If I can knock the lumps of it will roll better.”

“Think! Think! Think! That boy will think himself into an early grave...”

“O Krakatuk, hard nut from which I die Hee hee, pee pee You too, Nutcracker, will perish by and by. My son with sevenfold crown Will bring Nutcracker down. Yea, never fear He will avenge his mother dear. O Life, blood red and milky white, I leave thee for the shades of night. Squeak!”

“Terrific? What sort of word is that? Don’t you bring language like that into this cave!”

“I looked at the long dirt road that crawled across the plains, remembering the morning that Mama had died, cruel and sunny. They had come for her in a wagon and taken her away to be buried. And then the cousins and aunts and uncles had come and tried to fill up the house. But they couldn’t.”

″‘The door’, replied Maimie, ‘will always, always be open, and mother will always be waiting at it for me.‘”

After their mother passes away, Retta, Johnny, and Roy don’t have much parenting in their lives. Their dad is a country singer who keeps them well fed but isn’t around much. Older sister Retta takes control, leading her brothers on all sorts of unwise adventures and promising that one day they’ll have money, safety, and a nice home.

“Humphrey followed Mommy into the kitchen. It was snug and warm...”

“Alex had realized during those months how enormous their mother’s presence had been and how painful her absence was now.”

She was strong from endless hard work, and not old: She’d given birth to me before she was seventeen, and when she held me I could see we had the same skin, although in other ways we were not much alike she having broad, placid features, while mine, I’d been told (for we had no mirrors in the remote mountain village of Mino), were finer, like a hawk’s.

“For as long as I could recall, my mother had simply called me ‘Son,’ and, since her name was Asta, ‘Asta’s son’ became my common name. In a world in which one lived by the light of a father’s name and rank, that meant—since I had no father—I existed in a shadow.”

Clarice Bean just wants to be alone, but finding some time and a place to be alone in her house is a challenge. Clarice lives with her mother and father, shares a room with her younger brother and has an older brother and sisters too. On top of that, her grandfather lives with the family. But when living stacked on top of each other leads to a big fight, can Clarice make the best of the consequences.

“Once again, from far away she thought she heard her mother calling. But she knew it couldn’t be...could it?”

“Humphrey peeped in. It was pink and sunny... and smelled just like Mommy... with lots of very pretty things to look at.”

“From far away she thought she heard her mother calling...but it wasn’t her.”

“They live together in that house, Joel Gustafson and his father. And both of them dream, in their different ways, about Joel’s mum, Jenny, who simply vanished one day. Packed a suitcase and went away.”

A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo’s life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can’t talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands.

“When Joel emerged into the street, he was still embarrassed. He didn’t want to go shopping anymore. He didn’t want to be his own mother. But he did want revenge.”

“You see, your mother’s always been ambitious for power. At first she tried to get it in the normal way, through marriage, but that didn’t work, as I think you’ve heard. So she had to turn to the Church.”

“All those years, since Jenny had left, Joel had been his own mother. He’d never had any difficulty knowing what was best for himself.”

“Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.”

“While the flour baby project has indeed left Simon wiser and more tolerant, he is and still can be rather a handful for his mother and his teachers, although he did actually and in fact do a much much better job caring for his flour baby than many if not most of his schoolmates, than his school friends did.”

“Three children and their mother live in a cottage shaped like a hat on a little island in a lake. One day their mother goes to the mainland to find yarn to ...”

“One night they woke up and their Owl Mother was GONE. ‘Where’s Mommy?’ asked Sarah.”

“The baby owls thought (all owls think a lot)- ‘I think she’s gone hunting,’ said Sarah. ‘To get us our food!’ said Percy. ‘I want my mummy! said Bill”

“Rhoda, please clean up your room now,′ said Rhoda’s mother. “Too tired,′ Rhoda answered. ‘Stanely!’ said their mother. ‘See that Rhoda cleans up her room.’ ‘Shake a leg, Rhoda,’ said Stanely.”

The Bed and Breakfast Star is a great book about a small girl, Elsa who lives with her mum, stepfather and her two step-siblings. She lives a normal life until one day they get homeless and are forced to live in a Bed and breakfast hotel. This hotel is disgusting and very small. Will Elsa and her family have better times or suffer to live their life?

″‘Do you really think I can be a mother of sons? Don’t you think they’ll be loyal to her, since she gave birth to them?’ ‘The children will go to their true mother—you,’ said Brave Orchid. ‘That’s the way it is with mothers and children.‘”

“Her mother had been a wild, stormy, romantic young woman, who rode like a Cossack, shot like a champion, and smoked (to the scandal of the fascinated regiment) tiny black cheroots in an ivory holder.”

“To me, my mother wasn’t that mysterious. She was my mother. Always reasonable, always sure of herself. To me, she was about as mysterious as a glass of water. She knew what she wanted; she knew what she didn’t want.”

“My mother was good at that, making people feel normal. Safe. Like as long as she was there, nothing truly bad could happen.”

“He could not remember his own mother and Claire had come as a wonderful surprise, giving him a hug when he came home from school, asking him about his day, telling him about hers, arranging picnics and unexpected parties and helping him with hard homework.”

“Mum had said that if he made himself invisible people would like him and he wanted that very much.”

″‘How could she get lost?’ Sammy asked. ‘She knew where we were.’ ‘Not lost from us,’ Maybeth said. ‘Lost from who?’ Sammy asked. ‘Not lost from anyone,’ Maybeth said. ‘Just lost.‘”

“Little Bear and Little Sal’s mother and Little Sal and Little Bear’s mother were all mixed up with each other among the blueberries on Blueberry Hill.”

″‘Dicey?’ ‘She loves us,’ Dicey muttered. ‘But that’s the only reason I can think of that might be true.’ ‘There’s nothing wrong with Maybeth. You know that.‘” “It runs in families. Hereditary craziness.

“ ‘Mowzer, my handsome,’ he said, for he was a courteous and well-spoken man, ‘Mowzer, my handsome, it will soon be Christmas, and no man can stand by at Christmas and see the children starve. Someone must go fishing come what may, and I think it must be me. It cannot be the young men, for they have wives and children and mothers to weep for them if they do not return. But my wife and parents are dead long since and my children are grown and gone.’ “

“For an instant she remembered her mother’s dark dewdrop eyes, as she said, ‘You don’t know how powerful love can be,’ and she thought how strange it was that love had made her both callous and tender.”

“When I was growing up, I wanted to be a coach. I had people telling me you can’t do this, you’re not a great player. Be realistic. When I got rejection letters from colleges where I wanted to coach, my mom would say, ‘You are going to make it someday. You have something special within you and that is your spirit for life which will help you get to the top.‘”

“The other thing I want to clear up right away is that this was MOM’s idea, not mine.”

“It all hit me at once: the climb, the arrest, the kid falling from the Flatiron... I broke down. My mom held me.”

“She hesitated and glanced at her mother, fearful that she had said the wrong thing, the thing that would bring the pained look to her mother’s face.”

“Peter looked at his shoes. He never looked at his father any more, nor at his mother.”

“Lara feels completely alone after the death of her mother. She is an intruder in her father’s new family, living far away from all that has been familiar.”

“The Second World War is raging. Times are very hard in Poland, especially for Jews, and Alex is one of them. His mother has disappeared and his father is “selected” by the German army for an unknown destination. Alone, Alex is forced to take refuge in an abandoned building at 78 Bird Street. Here he hopes to wait out the harsh winter and the promised return of his father.”

“I can remember my mother refusing to go out into the street because she couldn’t stand the sight of all the children begging for bread when she had nothing to give them. Her first worry was for me and my brother, and every slice of bread she gave another child meant one less for us.”

“There’s some stuff I don’t understand about this accident—like why it happened and why Robbie had to die and why I didn’t die. Mama keeps huggin’ me, sayin’, ‘Praise the Lord’ and stuff like that. But what about Robbie’s mama? What is she saying?”

“From above, I felt someone hug my shoulders, I thought it was my father. I turned and became flushed with pride to find Mom holding me tightly. I could feel her heart beat. I never felt as safe and as warm as that moment in time, at the Russian River.”

The Parker children’s home becomes a battlefield because they want a pet while their mother declares that she will have no gerbils in her house.

“I put the broom down wrap my arms around her and tell her thank you. For loving us, and Dad, and letting us play basketball, and being the best mother in the world.”

“The child who has good maternal experiences will develop a sense of basic security and will not be subject to morbid fears of losing support, being annihilated, or the like.”

A boy gets two gerbils from a friend and so starts the battle between him and his sisters (with the silent support of his step-father) on one side and his mother on the other.

“Old Tom tried to be good...though sometimes he was a bit naughty. ‘Aren’t you a little too old for such things?’ Angela Throgmorton often asked. ”

“I shall be like my mother, silent in a blue apron locking up the cupboards.”

“Thursday February 12th. Lincoln’s birthday. I found my mother dyeing her hair in the bathroom tonight. This has come as complete shock to me. For thirteen and three-quarter years I have thought I had a mother with red hair, now I found out that it is really light brown. My mother asked me no to tell my father. What a state their marriage must be in!”

“I felt rotten today. It’s my mother’s fault for singing “My Way” at two o’clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children’s home.”

“My father got the dog drunk on cherry brand at the party last night. If the RSPCA hear about it he could get done. Eight days have gone by since Christmas Day but my mother still hasn’t worn the green lurex apron I bought her for Christmas! She will get bath-cubes next year. ”

“Wednesday, January 28th. Last Quarter. I woke up with a bit of a cold this morning. I asked my mother for a note to excuse me from games. She said she refused to namby-pamby me a day longer! How would she like to run about on a muddy field in the freezing drizzle, dressed only in PE shorts and a singlet?”

“The words ‘mother’ and ‘dead’ were unbearable. She wanted to run, but there was no place to run to.”