Edna Ferber Quotes

What upset me the most was not that I would die, but that I was letting down my parents. I felt very guilty for chasing this dream career of mine, at the expense of my parents.

I should have done more. I did too little of everything.

Many working mothers feel guilty about not being at home. And when they are there, they wish it could be perfect. This pressure to make every minute happy puts working parents in a bind when it comes to setting limits and modifying behavior.

God, it sucks to disappoint your parents, even at forty-two years old.

Nobody feels any worse than I do about losing.

Our standards for motherhood are so high that many of us harbor intense, secret guilt for every harsh word we speak to our children, every negative thought that enters our minds.

That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.

No, Miss Wright didn't want to meet her kid. To her, that relationship was just as important, just as ideal and impossible as it would be to the child. She'd expect that young man to be perfect, smart, and talented, everything to compensate for all the mistakes that she'd made. The whole wasted, unhappy mess of her life.

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.

No matter how many Christmas presents you give your child, there's always that terrible moment when he's opened the very last one. That's when he expects you to say, 'Oh yes, I almost forgot,' and take him out and show him the pony.

Yes, it's your fault I'm alive.

Regret is the most tiresome of companions.

The last thing I ever want to do is disappoint my parents. If something ever happened to one of my parents, I'd want them to go knowing I made them proud.

She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.

When it comes to our money and work lives, most of us have had our challenges, our valleys. Most of us have a couple of files in our head. One, I name "It was my own damn fault." And the other one I name, "I don't know how I will ever forgive those bastards."

Especially with our first child, we tend to take too much responsibility--both credit and blame--for everything. The more we wantto be good parents, the more we tend to see ourselves as making or breaking our children.

The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.

Obviously no parent does everything right. It's this weird thing that happens where you are striving to be as good as you can be so that they turn out well. And that requires that you be a really great, evolved, aware person in every moment. Which is pretty awesome. But it's also putting tremendous pressure on yourself--which is why women feel so guilty!

Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.

People are way too hard on themselves. Comparing yourself to other people can be damaging; the most important thing is just to be you and to try to engage with your child. If you're constantly working, so you don't have that much time to spend with them, but you have 20 minutes at the end of the day to read them their favourite book, children will remember that.

Sometimes I feel very guilty, so I don't know if I am a clear example of a perfect father, because sometimes I also just punish myself, saying I'm not doing probably the right thing at this particular moment. It's a secret.

I feel like I failed," I said. "Don't beat yourself up," Jim said. "She might not have turned out like you planned, but that don't mean she turned out wrong.

What have I to forgive and whom?

Do not have regrets. Guilt is a wasted emotion.

Thwarted lives have the most character-conditioned hate