Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It was a bitter moment for us. We weren't two mature parents. We were just two kids playing grown-up. We still needed Mommy and Daddy's permission, blessings, and money to survive.
To say, "Well, I write when I really get into it" is a bunch of bull. Put the paper in the typewriter, stare at it a long time, get snowblindness if you have to, but write something.
Some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love - why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.
The fact that Americans drag around the world by the busloads to glimpse the past probably has something to do with the youth of our country. We revere anything older than George Burns.
I firmly believe kids don't want your understanding. They want your trust, your compassion, your blinding love and your car keys, but you try to understand them and you're in big trouble.
Throughout the years I have set up my own rules about eating food: Never eat anything you can't pronounce. Beware of food that is described as, "Some Americans say it tastes like chicken.
Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.
Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer.
I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet-tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.
I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.
For the first two years of a child's life, we spend every waking hour tryibg to get the child to communicate. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out how we can reverse the process.
No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.
Grandma told me Mama was once caught by the Principal for writing in the front of her book, "In Case of Fire, Throw This in First." I have never had so much respect for Mama as the day I heard this.
We even switched to a newly-formed church across the town that gave one hundred and twenty trading stamps each time we attended. (We now worship a brown and white chicken with a sunburst on its chest.)
Let us hope manufacturers can come up with a diaper that is environmentally sound. To go back to cloth would send us back to the day when breathing and raising a baby at the same time were incompatible.
With girls, everything looks great on the surface. But beware of drawers that won't open. They contain a three-month supply of dirty underwear, unwashed hose, and rubber bands with blobs of hair in them.
Myths that need clarification: "Everyone in California lives on a white, sandy beach." False. The only people who live on California beaches are vacationers from Arizona, Utah, and Nevada who own condos.
The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, "Could I get you your check?" and we answered, "How about the menu first?"
Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted. Every evening they disappear. Most parents never imagine how hard they try to please us, and how miserable they feel when they think they have failed.
I was leafing through a magazine where there was a before-and-after picture of a woman who went from a size 5 to a size 3 by liposuction. Was she serious? I've cooked bigger turkeys than her "before" picture.
My mother won't admit it, but I've always been a disappointment to her. Deep down inside, she'll never forgive herself for giving birth to a daughter who refuses to launder aluminium foil and use it over again.
It is ludicrous to read the microwave direction on the boxes of food you buy, as each one will have a disclaimer: THIS WILL VARY WITH YOUR MICROWAVE. Loosely translated, this means, You're on your own, Bernice.
A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat. A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday. A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend -- and he's a priest.
Friends are "annuals" that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a "perennial" that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There's a place in the garden for both of them.
If I had my life to live over, instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished ever moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.
I have never understood, for example, how come a child can climb up on the roof, scale the TV antenna, and rescue the cat ... yet cannot walk down the hallway without grabbing both walls with his grubby hands for balance.
Occasionally, once a speaker is on his feet, it is difficult to get him to sit down. ... If and when he returns to earth, he notices half of the room is paging the other half and a few are playing with the melted candles.
I've always been intrigued with the variety of answers this generation will give their children who ask, "Where did I come from, Mommy?" They will range from "Number 176 vial in Buffalo, New York," to "You were defrosted."
I've decided life is too fragile to finish a book I dislike just because it cost $16.95 and everyone else loved it. Or eat a fried egg with a broken yolk (which I hate) when the dog would leap over the St. Louis Arch for it.
I read one psychologist's theory that said, "Never strike a child in your anger." When could I strike him? When he is kissing me on my birthday? When he's recuperating from measles? Do I slap the Bible out of his hand on Sunday?
There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. ... Time, self-pity, apathy, bitterness, and exhaustion can take the Christmas out of the child, but you cannot take the child out of Christmas.
People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success. Actually, it is no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman.
Authorities say brain cells may shrink, but they don't necessarily die. Frankly, I am cheered by the fact that something is shrinking. I'd be even more thrilled if what was shrinking affected my dress size, but you can't have everything.
With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It's all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.
I was trampled to death by a man who believed his luggage would be the first piece off. If he were an experienced traveler, he would know that the first piece of luggage belongs to no one. It's just a dummy suitcase to give everyone hope.
My son would walk to the refrigerator-freezer and fling both doors open and stand there until the hairs in his nose iced up. After surveying $200 worth of food in varying shapes and forms, he would declare loudly, 'There's nothing to eat!'
I don't know when pepper mills in a restaurant got to be right behind frankincense and myrrh in prominence. It used to be in a little jar that sat next to the salt on the table and everyone passed it around, sneezed, and it was no big deal.
Babies should enjoy the freedom to vocalize whether it be in church, a public meeting place, during a movie, or after hours when the lights are out. They have not yet learned that joy and laughter have to last a lifetime and must be conserved.
I've never vied for power in the family before. Pointing a box at the garage door and saying "Open!" was never a big deal, but holding that television tuner and realizing I alone control what is flashed on the screen brings out the Iacocca in me.
When it comes to cooking, five years ago I felt guilty "just adding water." Now I want to bang the tube against the countertop and have a five-course meal pop out. If it comes with plastic silverware and a plate that self-destructs, all the better.
Many people are intimidated by doctors. ... People also feel stupid when they don't understand what a doctor's talking about the first time around, so they don't ask again. And let's be honest here, people. English is not a doctor's first language.
Phrases and their actual meanings: My teacher has never liked me. Expect a phone call before lunch from the teacher informing you that your child has been launching hot dogs by compressing them inside a small Thermos and then removing the lid quickly.
Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience.
Adults can take a simple holiday for Children and screw it up. What began as a presentation of simple gifts to delight and surprise children around the Christmas tree has culminated in a woman unwrapping six shrimp forks from her dog, who drew her name.
The more I think about it, the more there is to be said for the sloth. He sleeps fifteen to eighteen hours a day and is known to have taken forty-eight days to travel four miles. He hangs in the trees after he's dead. But he lives longer than the cheetah.
When they told me I needed a mastectomy, I thought of the thousands of luncheons and dinners I had attended where they slapped a name tag on my left bosom. I always smiled and said, 'Now, what shall we name the other one?' That would no longer be a problem.
Grandmas can shed the yoke of responsibility, relax and enjoy their grandchildren in a way that was not possible when they were raising their own children. And they can glow in the realisation that here is their seed of life that will harvest generations to come.
For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it's time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward.
I remember thinking how often we look, but never see ... we listen, but never hear ... we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.
Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, 'A house guest,' you're wrong because I have just described my kids.