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"That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself."
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"A boy is not free to find a partner of his own as long as he must be the partner to his mother."
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Personal Development
"People who lost their mother should be careful about committing crime, because probably no one else is praying to save you."
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Personal Development
"Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother."
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Personal Development
"Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother."
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Personal Development
"My mother told me I was dancing before I was born. She could feel my toes tapping wildly inside her for months."
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Personal Development
"Madlen came to sit beside her on the bed. "Lady Queen," she said with her own particular brand of rough gentleness. "It is not the job of the child to protect her mother. It's the mother's job to protect the child. By allowing your mother to protect you, you gave her a gift. Do you understand me?"
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Personal Development
"My daughter teases me once in a while saying, Remember when you used to be my mother and you had black hair?"
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Personal Development
"A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."
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Personal Development
"My mother was the concert master of the symphony. Absurdity and eccentricity were not criticized."
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Personal Development
"When my mother signed at MGM, that was the only kind of contract you could sign. There was no such thing as an independent agent."
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"That is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to music that made me want to cry. I closed that chamber myself, for all the usual reasons. And now I seem to have made a pact with some philistine devil: if I don't attempt to re-open it, I will be allowed just enough energy and optimism to get through a working day without wanting to hang myself."
Emotion
"I don't want anyone writing in to point out that I spend too much money on books, many of which I will never read. I know that already. I certainly intend to read all of them, more or less. My intentions are good. Anyway, it's my money. And I'll bet you do it too."
Reading
"Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours' reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini."
Parenting
"Have you got any soul?" a woman asks the next afternoon. That depends, I feel like saying; some days yes, some days no. A few days ago I was right out; now I've got loads, too much, more than I can handle. I wish I could spread it a bit more evenly, I want to tell her, get a better balance, but I can't seem to get it sorted. I can see she wouldn't be interested in my internal stock control problems though, so I simply point to where I keep the soul I have, right by the exit, just next to the blues."
Introspection
"That's the trouble with good writers. Only the bad ones make you want to do the human thing and look away."
Emotion
"There were only seven years between the first and last Beatles albums. That's nothing, seven years, when you think of how their hairstyles changed and their music changed. Some bands now go seven years without hardly bothering to do anything."
Evolution
"We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness?"
Question
"It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party."
Relationship
"The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives."
Sentimentality
"I don't have the heart to tell my sons that the older one gets, the less funny literature becomes-and they would refuse to believe me if I tried to explain that some people don't think jokes even belong in proper books. I won't bother breaking the news that, if they remain readers, they will insist on depressing themselves for about a decade of their lives, in a concerted search of gravitas through literature."
Education
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