Oriana Fallaci Quotes

My mom, Irmelin, taught me the value of life. Her own life was saved by my grandmother during World War II.

Man appears for a little while to laugh and weep, to work and play, and then to go to make room for those who shall follow him in the never-ending cycle.

I don't want my grandchildren to go through what I went through.

My grandmother was a very charitable woman, and my mother grew up that way.

As the films of clay are removed from our eyes, Death loses the false aspect of the spectre, and we fall at last into its arms as a wearied child upon the bosom of its mother.

Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei

In these years we are witnessing the gigantic spectacle of innumerable human lives wandering about lost in their own labyrinths, through not having anything to which to give themselves.

A lot of my generation are living out the un-lived lives of our mothers.

I think I didn't know what I was creating, as much as I knew what I didn't want to do. And I didn't want my mother's life. She was an unhappy, frustrated artist who always dreamed of a life that was never going to be hers.

The greatest finish line for me was finishing college - it was a pact I made with my mother, during a time when she fell ill. That happened during my Freshman year, and unfortunately she never saw me compete in the Olympics. But she really wanted me to finish college, because she never finished Junior High.

My mother - my stepmother, really, she herself have been what they call an elocutionist. And she was the one who first encouraged me to write poetry, because she used to read it to us. And then when I began to write when I was nine years old, my first poem was published in the Amsterdam News. I called it "The Graveyard."

Take death for example. A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it, and often consider its intrusion a tragic event. Yet we'd find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.

I hold that when a person dies / His soul returns again to earth; / Arrayed in some new flesh disguise / Another mother gives him birth / With sturdier limbs and brighter brain.

So mothers everywhere take heart. The indoctrination you administer now may have unanticipated positive effects years later.

As my late mother famously observed, the one thing to be said for growing old is that every year there are a few more things I don’t have to give a rat’s ass about.

I take a few quick sips. "This is really good." And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting. "This is from Grand Auntie," my mother explains. "She told me 'If I buy the cheap tea, then I am saying that my whole life has not been worth something better.' A few years ago she bought it for herself. One hundred dollars a pound." "You're kidding." I take another sip. It tastes even better.

Arrayed in a new body another mother may someday give birth so that with stronger limbs and brighter mind the old soul shall take the road to earth again.

Most of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers, because they were not able to become the unique people they were born to be.

Once upon a time, each of us was somebody's kid. Everyone had a father, even if he never provided anything more than his seed. Everyone had a mother, even if she had to leave us on a stranger's doorstep. No matter how we're eventually raised, all of our stories begin the exact same way. They all end the same, too.

I started writing when I was 5 years old. I would dictate stories to my mother, and she would copy them in a scrapbook. If she changed anything to make it, in her opinion, better, I would throw a tantrum.

I embrace the criticism, because ultimately (it means) the masses have seen it [my movie]. I embrace it for my father's story, for my mother's story, for my auntie, for my grandmother, who all got their teeth knocked out so I could be [where I am].

I realized the universe is 15 billion years old and unspeakably complicated. I still love the teachings of Christ, but I also believe that the human condition prevents us from having any true objective knowledge and understanding of the universe.

Learning the lessons of the past allows you to walk boldly in the light without running the risk of stumbling in the darkness. This is the way it's supposed to work. This is God's plan: father and mother, grandfather and grandmother teaching their children; children learning from them and then becoming a more righteous generation through their own personal experiences and opportunities. Learning the lessons of the past allows you to build personal testimony on a solid bedrock of obedience, faith, and the witness of the Spirit.

A light-heel'd mother makes a heavy-heel'd daughter.

Why do we spend years using up our bodies to nurture our minds with experience and find our minds turning then to our exhausted bodies for solace?