Dead Mothers Quotes

but even with the gift of tongues, I'm having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone's ass? Is "ho" always feminine, and "muthafucka" always masculine, while "bitch" can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and phat to be da bomb or can I just be "stupid"? I'll not be singing over any dead mothers until I understand. The ~ Christopher Moore

The father spent his time talking and thinking of religion. He proclaimed himself an agnostic and was so absorbed in destroying the ideas of God that had crept into the minds of his neighbors that he never saw God manifesting himself in the little child that, half forgotten, lived here and there on the bounty of her dead mother's relatives. ~ Sherwood Anderson

The only mothers who never embarrass, harass, dismiss, discount, deceive, distort, neglect, baffle, appall, inhibit, incite, insult, or age poorly are dead mothers, perfectly contained in photographs, pressed into two dimensions like a golden autumn leaf. ~ Kelly Corrigan

Our mothers who have gone are buried in our bodies. It can be said that we were born with dead mothers in our body. ~ Kim Hyesoon

As our ship tumbled, free-falling through the eye of a saltwater cyclone, the nine giant maidens spiraled around us, weaving in and out of the tempest so they appeared to drown over and over again. Their faces contorted in anger and glee.
Their long hair lashed us with icy spray. Each time they emerged, they wailed and shrieked, but it wasn't just random noise. Their screams had a tonal quality, like a chorus of whale songs played through heavy feedback. I even caught snippets of lyrics: boiling mead...wave daughters...death for you! It reminded me of the first time Halfborn Gunderson played Norwegian black metal for me.
After a few bars, it dawned on me...Oh, wait. That's supposed to be music! ~ Rick Riordan

If God, as some now say, is dead, He no doubt died of trying to find an equitable solution to the Arab-Jewish problem. ~ I. F. Stone

She received the news of his death in silent submission. She arranged the funeral rites as well as she could in her modest circumstances, for his uncle refused to offer the slightest help or to mourn. She died, though no one knew she was dead. Every day and every night, for ten years, she died a little more. She breathed and ate and drank but she was dead. She spoke to people and walked among them, dead. Only much later did her body give up its already-deceased spirit, its dead spirit, no longer forced to pretend, to play at being alive. ~ Jokha Alharthi

This infuriated my father, who said BYU was a "meat market" and that if Heavenly Father didn't intend women to understand economics, why did He give them charge of households, and if women weren't intended to understand philosophy, why were they the first teachers of the word, and if they weren't intended to practice psychology, why did the Lord intend they should be mothers? ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard

Many hands were willing to perform the last tender ministrations. It is characteristic of the small town and rural districts. Sympathy there takes concrete form. It becomes cakes and cinnamon rolls and sitting up nights, husking corn and washing dishes and closing the eyes of the neighboring dead. ~ Bess Streeter Aldrich

She was lying like a loaf of bread. I said, baby, baby, baby, are you dead? ~ Mojo Nixon

No, this is throwing up like coming off the tilt-a-whirl at age seven, like discovering that dead rat under the porch, like finding out someone you loved never loved you at all. ~ Megan Abbott

Son, my dad said, every man needs a bitter, resentful woman in his life. Because there's nothing more touching to a mother's heart than to know that her son thinks of her constantly. ~ David C. Holley

Lady Cinderford,' said the Dowager, referring to her widowed sister-in-law in accents of loathing, 'will act as hostess at Stanyon over my dead body!'
'That would be something quite out of the ordinary way,' murmured the Earl. ~ Georgette Heyer

He swaggered over to my mother, and kissed her so long and slow that my own cheeks started to burn, because I was sure the neighbors would see. When he lifted his head, my mother's eyes were a color I had never seen before and don't think I have ever seen again. ~ Jodi Picoult

Now I'm a God, but tomorrow, when you have to stop me from playing with dead things again, you'll be right back to calling me an idiot, won't you? ~ Mira Grant

Know this: in some way you're already dead. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

All men are interdependent. Every nation is an heir of a vast treasury of ideas and labor to which both the living and the dead of all nations have contributed. Whether we realize it or not, each of us lives eternally 'in the red.' We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am truly my mother's son. ~ David Geffen

If you come back from the dead, you don't have the same value system, I think. ~ Sigourney Weaver

Mama and I would go to a funeral and she'd stand up to read the dead person's eulogy. She made the ignorant and ugly sound like scholars and movie stars, turned the mean and evil into saints and angels. She knew what people had meant to be in their hearts, not what the world had forced them to become. She knew the ways in which working too hard for paltry wages could turn you mean and cold, could kill the thing that made you laugh. ~ Henry Louis Gates

I didn't know what to think about first: me seeing Claude naked, Claude seeing me naked, or the whole fact that we were related and naked in the same room.
(Sookie Stackhouse, Dead in the Family) ~ Charlaine Harris

My beloved has arrived, but rather than greeting him,
All I can do is bite the corner of my apron with a blank expression-
What an awkward woman am I.
My heart has longed for him as hugely and openly as a full moon
But instead I narrow my eyes, and my glance to him
Is sharp and narrow as the crescent moon.
But then, I'm not the only one who behaves this way.
My mother and my mother's mother were as silly and stumbling as I am when they were girls ...
Still, the love from my heart is overflowing,
As bright and crimson as the heated metal in a blacksmith's forge. ~ Kim Dong Hwa

For the first time the Don showed annoyance. He poured another glass of anisette and drank it down. He pointed a finger at his son. "You want to learn," he said. "Now listen to me. A man's first duty is to keep himself alive. Then comes what everyone else calls honor. This dishonor, as you call it, I willingly take upon myself. I did it to save your life as you once took on dishonor to save mine. You would have never left Sicily alive without Don Croce's protection. So be it. Do you want to be a hero like Guiliano, a legend? And dead? I love him as the son of my dear friends, but I do not envy him his fame. You are alive and he is dead. Always remember that and live your life not be be a hero but to remain alive. With time, heroes seem a little foolish."

Michael sighed. "Guiliano had no choice," he said.

"We are more fortunate," the Don said.

It was the first lesson Michael received from his father and the one he learned best. It was to color his future life, persuade him to make terrible decisions he could never have dreamed of making before. It changed his perception of honor and heroism. It helped him survive, but it made him unhappy. For despite the fact that his father did not envy Guiliano, Michael did. ~ Mario Puzo

What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?

That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…

Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.

I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.

I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluste ~ Donna Tartt

To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What is required, we are told, is plays and films. Books are out of date! The book is dead, long live television! One question which is not even raised let alone considered is: Who will write the drama and film scripts when the generation that can read and write has been used up? ~ Chinua Achebe

Don't die until you're dead. ~ Billy Connolly

He's been dead for so many years, but I'm still trying to impress him. That's what gave me my drive. 'Look at me, Dad, I've succeeded.' ~ Elton John

In my world death was like a nameless and incomprehensible hand, a door-to-door salesman who took away mothers, beggars, or ninety year old neighbors, like a hellish lottery. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

He didn't remember the very first time he actually died very well. It wasn't as bad as remediation, but he remembered being afraid and worried… and when he found himself alive again a few hours later with Mearth's wild green eyes peering down at him, he remembered still being afraid and worried. It was strange, he thought, to be afraid of being alive… but being alive was worse than being dead in his mind. ~ Rebecca McNutt

They felt that everything was fleeting, that everything wore out, that everything that was not dead would die, and that even the illusory ties holding them together would not endure. Their sadness did not bring them together. On the contrary, they were separated by all the force of their two sorrows. To suffer together, alas, what disunion! ~ Henri Barbusse

The Feegles believe that they are dead. This world is so nice, they argue, that they must have been really good in a past life and then died and ended up here. Appearing to die here means merely going back to the Last World, which they believe is rather dull. ~ Terry Pratchett

We honor our heroic and patriotic dead by being true men, as true men by faithfully fighting the battles of our day as they fought the battles of their day. ~ David McMurtrie Gregg

I am his tomb. The earth is nothing. Dead. Staves and orchards issue from my mouth. His. Perfume my chest, which is wide, wide open. A greengage plum swells his silence. The bees escape from his eyes, from his sockets where the liquid pupils have flowed from under the flaccid eyelids. To eat a youngster shot on the barricades, to devour a young hero, is no easy thing. We all love the sun. My mouth is bloody. So are my fingers. I tore the flesh to shreds with my teeth. Corpses do not usually bleed. His did. ~ Jean Genet

Give yourself to me, Gemma, and you will never be alone again. You'll be worshiped. Adored. Loved. But you must give yourself to me- a willing sacrifice.'
Tears slip down my face. 'Yes,' I murmur.
Gemma, don't listen,' Circe says hoarsely, and for a moment, I don't see Eugenia; I see only the tree, the blood pumping beneath its pale skin, the bodies of the dead hanging from it like chimes.
I gasp, and Eugenia is before me again. 'Yes, this is what you want, Gemma. Try as you might, you cannot kill this part of yourself. The solitude of the self taht waits just under the stairs of your soul. Always there, no matter how much you've tried to get rid of it. I understand. I do. Stay with me and never be lonely again.'
Don't listen... to that... bitch,' Circe croaks, and the vines tighten around her neck.
No, you're wrong,' I say to Eugenia as if coming out of a long sleep. 'You couldn't kill this part of yourself. And you couldn't accept it, either.'
I'm sure I don't know what you mean.' she says, sounding uncertain for the first time.
That's why they were able to take you. They found your fear.'
And what, pray, was it?'
Your pride. You couldn't believe you might have some of the same qualities as the creatures themselves.'
I am not like them. I am their hope. I sustain them.'
No. You tell yourself that. That's why CIrce told me to search my dark corners. So I wouldn't be caught off guard.'
Circe laughts, a splintered ca ~ Libba Bray

All these last offices and ceremonies that concern the dead, the careful funeral arrangements, and the equipment of the tomb, and the pomp of obsequies, are rather the solace of the living than the comfort of the dead. ~ Augustine Of Hippo