Tillie Olsen Quotes

I was aware, in those early days of motherhood, that my behaviour was strange to the people who knew me well. It was as though I had been brainwashed, taken over by a cult religion. And yet this cult, motherhood, was not a place where I could actually live. Like any cult, it demanded a complete surrender of identity to belong to it.

You think you know what love is - until you have a child and discover that unconditional mother love.

A father may turn his back on his child, … . but a mother's love endures through all.

It's the curse of motherhood. You're required to love us even when we vex you.

The biggest surprise, which is also the best, is that I didn't know I would love motherhood as much as I do.

My priorities had been changing before I had Addie but after she was born they changed completely. I don't count - my daughter sort of owns me.

They say, once you have a child, your heart is forever outside your body. I totally understand that now.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

Morality and its victim, the mother - what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?

I think once you're a mother to one, you're a mother to them all.

I gave myself to my children. It happens to some women.

Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life.

My children were the center of my life.

A mother who is really a mother is never free.

Being a mother adds another emotional dimension, a feel for children that I didn't have before I had one. They were a pain before.

Becoming a mother was the single defining event of my life. It felt like the whole world shifted.

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

It doesn't matter if a child comes to you or through you. That love is still the same. You are still a mother.

My son smelled like a cinnamon bun, and that smell entered into my biological being, and it became an imperative that I keep him alive at all costs, so then there's this monster - this tiger or lion - that comes forward in you to protect them. And it doesn't stop. It doesn't matter if they become men or women.

'Bad mother' is probably the worst thing you can say to any woman who has children.

My mom was my mother and father. My father lost his mind when I was about 4 years old. And my mom did everything she could to make sure that we was brought up right.

When you become a mother, it's your mission in life to protect your child. I therefore can't imagine what a hell it must be crossing the sea with a crying child on your lap without any certainty of making it to the other side alive.

Mothers are the only ones that think nothing is beyond their control when it comes to their children.

I am a mother. Whether it is Alia or Shaheen, at any point in time, if they are suffering, I am the one who gets affected badly.

Motherhood: 24/7 on the frontlines of humanity. Are you man enough to try it?