#mothers

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers. ↗

— Norman Schwarzkopf

#fathers #killing #left #means #mothers

Both my grandmothers had upright pianos, and I just knew how to play since I was a child. Nobody taught me. I sounded like a grown-up, and then I learned how to read music. I played so well by ear I could fool the teacher to believe I could play the notes. She'd make the mistake of playing the song once, and I could play it. ↗

— Valerie Simpson

#both #child #could #ear #fool

The capitalist class shoots down mothers and children. It stops at nothing, no matter how monstrous, to prevent the organization of the workers. ↗

— Ella R. Bloor

#children #class #down #how #matter

Mother (fragment) ...You asked me if I would be sad when it happened and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner, as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that. Were it not for the way you taught me to look at the world, to see the life at play in everything, I would have to be lonely forever. ↗

— Ted Kooser

#mothers-and-daughters #nature #poetry #life

He was looking forward eagerly to seeing her again. He had coped perfectly well on his own, of course, but it was very reassuring to have someone in your life who was always ready to fight for you, and he had missed that comforting feeling, ↗

— Ken Follett

#life

I'm your mother. I see all. Hear all. Know all. ↗

— Maria V. Snyder

#humor

I'm a mother," said her mother, in her foodless flat where the dust did not dare to settle, "and I know what I know. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#mothers #humor

I'm blessed and I couldn't be more grateful. Do you want to know why? Because I'm a mother, but that's only half of it. I'm blessed because, when I need to, I can still just be a daughter. I get the feeling that there is nothing more precious than to have both of these roles, simultaneously. ↗

— Adrianna Stepiano

#motherhood #mothers-and-daughters #motherhood

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

— Nella Larsen

#mothers #motherhood

If my mother's intention in whole or in part was to ensure that I never had to suffer any indignity or embarrassment for being a Jew, then she succeeded well enough. And in any case there were enough intermarriages and 'conversions' on both sides of her line to make me one of those many mischling hybrids who are to be found distributed all over the known world. And, as someone who doesn't really believe that the human species is subdivided by 'race,' let alone that a nation or nationality can be defined by its religion, why should I not let the whole question slide away from me? Why—and then I'll stop asking rhetorical questions—did I at some point resolve that, in whatever tone of voice I was asked 'Are you a Jew?' I would never hear myself deny it? ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#intermarriage #jews #mothers #nationality #race