Sane Mother Quotes

Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones - a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A windscreen wiper. A mother's marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered.

Alcoholism or addiction is a disease because it fits the definition of disease. It is progressive and chronic, and left untreated, it will kill.

Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?

Are you sane, Mother? Laughter in his mind, painful in its familiarity. Is any immortal every truly sane?

I'll take care of my mother," he said grimly. "I love her, but she doesn't run my life." "Yeah, that's what we all say. You. Me. Lucy." She stabbed the stick into the dirt. "These are powerful women. They're sane, they're smart, they rule their worlds, and they love us ferociously. A potent combination that makes it touch to pretend they're normal mothers.

My mothering needed a tad more Mother Theresa and a lot less Lizzy Borden.

It’s not all that hard to keep yourself sane, so long as you’re flexible with your definition of the term.

An angry woman is a bitch. An angry man is strong, whereas, a sad man or a fearful man is a wimp. A sad or fearful woman is frail.

When you're the sane brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your hands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the indifference of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap.

We teach what we need to learn. And we teach it until we get it.

The practice of self-observation mirrors the way in which a mother observes and attunes to her baby. Self-observation is a method of re-parenting ourselves. ... What am I feeling now? What am I thinking now? What am I doing at this moment? How am I breathing? What do I want for myself in this new moment?

I had been running as fast as I could for all of my adult life. A person can’t listen effectively while running. A running mother is not able to pick up clues. She is not able to let go of her own agenda long enough to stop and listen.

My fear of loneliness is like a disease.

No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty – they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?

A jalapeño pepper—generally considered to be the hottest pepper any sane person would attempt to chew and swallow—gets a rating of around 5,000 SHU.

I sent a clear warning to you, Aidan." There was a hint of censure in his words, although his voice was soft. There was a hard edge to Aidan's mouth. "I received your warning. But this is my city, Gregori, and my family. I take care of my own." Savannah rolled her eyes. "You could just beat on your chests,you know. It probably works just as well." You will show some respect, Gregori ordered. Savannah burst out laughing, then reached up to caress his shadowed jaw. "Keep hoping,my love, and perhaps someday someone will obey you." Aidan's mouth twitched, the golden eyes sliding over Gregori in amusement. "She inherited something besides her mother's good looks,did she not?" Gregori sighed heavily. "She is impossible." Aidan laughed,ignoring the warning flash from Gregori's pale eyes. "I believe they all are." Savannah ducked out from under Gregori's arm and found an overstuffed chair to curl up on. "Of course we're impossible.It's the only way to stay sane." "I would have brought Alexandria to meet you,but Gregori's warning dictated prudence." Aidan sounded smug, as if he had been able to lay down the law to his woman when Gregori was unable to do so. Savannah flashed an impish grin up at the man. "What did you do,leave her sleeping while you ran off to play hero? I'll just bet she has a thing or two to say to you when you wake her." Aidan had the grace to look sheepish. Then he turned to Gregori. "Your lifemate is a mean little thing, healer. I do not envy you." Savannah laughed, unrepentant. "He's crazy about me. Don't let him fool you." "I believe you," Aidan agreed. "Do not encourage her in her rebellion," Gregori tried to sound severe,but she was turning him inside out.She was everything to him, even with her silliness.Where did she get her outrageous sense of humor? How could she ever be happy with someone who hadn't laughed in centuries? She melted his insides. Melted him. He was careful to keep his face expressionless. It was bad enough that Savannah knew he was practically wrapped around her little finger. Aidan didn't need to know,too.

Maybe it was the insult of childbirth. Maybe it was the overwhelming unfairness of what happens to a woman’s status and body and position in the culture once she’s a mother. All those things can drive you crazy if you’re a smart person. If you are a smart woman, you cannot stand by and remain sane once you fully understand, as a smart woman does, the constraints of this world on a woman.

I thrust Sophie into a corner, blocking her with my body. She panted and snagged her lower lip in her teeth. “This is not my life,” she insisted. I looked at her solemnly. “I’m afraid it is. But it doesn’t have to be for long. Let’s just get through this. Then things go back to normal for you.” “Like they keep going back to normal for you?” Sophie hissed. “Ghost of your mother, psycho ex-best friend, company agent dating your dad, psychic vampire ex-boyfriend, werewolf current boyfriend—by the way, I can’t blame you for that one,” she confessed, eyes round as she mouthed the word whoa before continuing with her list, “Trip to the asylum, attempts against your life, vigilante father…” “Hey, the last ones are brand new. And the vigilante father thing? He’ll revert.” “Anyhow, I’m not so keen on your concept of normal.” I caught her staring at me.

Vic didn't have a car and probably spent a hundred and sixty hours a week at home. The house smelled of piss-soaked diapers and engine parts, and the sink was always full. In retrospect Vic was only surprised she didn't go crazy sooner. She was surprised that more young mothers didn't lose it. When your tits had become canteens and the soundtrack to your life was hysterical tears and mad laughter, how could anyone expect you to remain sane?

I learned from my mother long ago that to keep a sane head; you needed to keep everything in its place when it came to the shop. Otherwise it would overflow, like a teakettle filled with too much water, and burn you when you least expected it.

Your wife,” said Arthur, looking around, “mentioned some toothpicks.” He said it with a hunted look, as if he was worried that she might suddenly leap out from behind a door and mention them again. Wonko the Sane laughed. It was a light easy laugh, and sounded like one he had used a lot before and was happy with. “Ah yes,” he said, “that’s to do with the day I finally realized that the world had gone totally mad and built the Asylum to put it in, poor thing, and hoped it would get better.” This was the point at which Arthur began to feel a little nervous again. “Here,” said Wonko the Sane, “we are outside the Asylum.” He pointed again at the rough brickwork, the pointing, and the gutters. “Go through that door” — he pointed at the first door through which they had originally entered — “and you go into the Asylum. I’ve tried to decorate it nicely to keep the inmates happy, but there’s very little one can do. I never go in there myself. If I ever am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I simply look at the sign written over the door and I shy away.” “That one?” said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at a blue plaque with some instructions written on it. “Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do.” The sign read: “Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.” “It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.” He gazed out at the Pacific again, as if daring it to rave and gibber at him, but it lay there calmly and played with the sandpipers. “And in case it crossed your mind to wonder, as I can see how it possibly might, I am completely sane. Which is why I call myself Wonko the Sane, just to reassure people on this point. Wonko is what my mother called me when I was a kid and clumsy and knocked things over, and sane is what I am, and how,” he added, with one of his smiles that made you feel, Oh. Well that’s all right then. “I intend to remain.

The benign narcissist may be the self-obsessed mother who rarely asks you how you are feeling (but cares deeply about what you are wearing), the vapid coworker who wants everyone to know the provenance of her handbag, the life-of-the-party partner who is incapable of having a conversation much beyond the events of the weekend.

I never knew what Mother knowed, Like how a thread and needle sewed, And how a kiss healed boo-boos fast. Why family knots were made to last. I never knew how Mother saw A caring man in angry pa, A smile beneath the teary gloom, A game inside a messy room. I never knowed what Mother knew, Like how to smile when days were blue, And how to laugh for laughter’s sake, While giving up her slice of cake. I never saw what Mother see’d Like honor pulling garden weeds, Or deep confessions in a look, And hope alive in storybooks. I never knew how Mother knowed To hand out carrots when it snowed, And why hot cocoa liked the rain, While naptime kept a person sane. For mother knowed and see’d it all. A winner in a strike-out ball. A 'yes, please' in a shoulder shrug. A 'love you mostest' in a hug. Perhaps, someday, I’ll come to know What Mother saw and knowed as so. Like how 'I’m right' can be all wrong, And why the night requires a song. But of the things I learned and knew I never doubted one thing true. My mother made it crystal clear, she knowed and loved me ever dear.

Down the stairs again leapt Art. She whirled across the lower landing, her head full of barking cannon, towering rigging, the creak of timbers, the voice of her mother, Molly. Before her eyes floated the golden oasts of Amer Rica, Persis, and Zanzibari, dolphins springing like silver bullets from the blue mouths of the waves. 'Her father must be fetched!' shouted Miss Eeble. 'She has gone mad!' 'Sane,' remarked Art. 'Gone sane.

We decided that we should do Shabbos dinner here and we invited the family,” my dad said. “Please tell me you’re joking.” “Gabby, sweetie,” my mom said consolingly. “It’s best to get it over with quickly, trust me.” “Honey, I met them on my first date with your mother.” He looked at Braden. “I married her anyway.” I saw Braden try not to laugh. “It’s okay! You can laugh. We laugh a lot here. It keeps us sane and being sane is what separates us from the rest of Judy’s family.

I helped myself to coffee and brought it to the little kitchen table. I'd eaten baby food at that table, and I'd done my homework at it too. The refrigerator and the stove got changed out, but the table remained. It was the heart of the kitchen, and the kitchen was the heart of the house. Even after the attempted kidnapping, the kitchen still felt safe. Even with my mother nipping at the whiskey and my grandmother reading the obits for entertainment, the kitchen felt sane. Going with Grandma's theory, I was pretty confident that all our souls were intact, and that the kitchen was partly responsible for keeping them that way.

Every day," I said, "every day I go to work and I see my granddad. I see the drunks and the addicts, the people who have fallen right off the edge of the earth. I see people who have made every bad move anyone could make, made every major mistake there was to be made, and by the time I see them, they are paying for it, sometimes with their lives. That's why they came to the ER. "When you work in emergency medicine, you are seeing patients who are the least common denominator as far as human beings go; people who are heartbreakingly stupid and ditty and drunk and high and obnoxious--unbelievably obnoxious. These people have all flowed out of the darkest side of life. And when you are finished with them, that's mostly where they'll return. So each of you who is thinking you want to go into emergency medicine will have to ask yourself, 'Do I really want to do this?'" I tapped my chest. "I know the answer for myself--every day I work I'm taking care of someone who is just like my grandfather, someone just like my mother. But everyone in this room needs to ask himself or herself, 'Do I want to spend the rest of my life with addicts and idiots and drunks and psychotics? Is this what will make me happy?'" I peered at all of them over the top of the microphone. "Very few sane people answer yes.

What I expected of my wife was an internal locus of control. I did not for one single second control or want to control one single thing that she did or didn't do. I hoped she would do these things because SHE wanted to do them, because they were the choices that she made in HER life ON HER OWN. I believed with all my heart that she was free, that we were free, to do as we pleased when we pleased to do it. We make our decisions and we roll with the consequences. If she didn't want to be a mother or didn't want to be a wife than I expected her to be honest about it, to say it, so that we could take steps and bring reality into line with our mutual desire.

When we stepped out of the car, I heard the ghosts. Lots of them here, too many, swirling and battling for my attention. My father’s won out. The lake was hold-your-breath still, but I swore I could still hear Dad’s howl of delight as he cannonballed off the dock, his knees pressed tightly against his chest, his smile just south of sane, the upcoming splash a virtual tidal wave in the eyes of his only son. Dad liked to land near my sunbathing mother’s raft. She’d scold him, but she couldn’t hide the laugh. I blinked and the images were gone. But I remembered how the laugh and the howl and the splash would ripple and echo in the stillness of our lake, and I wondered if ripples and echoes like those ever fully die away, if somewhere in the woods my father’s joyful yelps still bounced quietly off the trees.

Stephen felt himself overtaken by a climactic surge of feeling. It frightened him because he thought it would have some physical issue, in spasm or bleeding or death. Then he saw that what he felt was not an assault but a passionate affinity. It was for the rough field running down to the trees and for the path going back into the village where he could see the tower of the church: these and the forgiving distance of the sky were not separate, but part of one creation, and he too, still by any sane judgement a young man, by the repeated tiny pulsing of his blood, was one with them. He looked up and saw the sky as it would be trailed with stars under darkness, the crawling nebulae and smudged lights of infinite distance: these were not different worlds, it seemed now clear to him, but bound through the mind of creation to the shredded white clouds, the unbreathed air of May, to the soil that lay beneath the damp grass at his feet. He held tightly on to the gate and laid his head on his arms, in some residual fear that the force of binding love he felt would sweep him from the earth. He wanted to stretch out his arms and enfold in them the fields, the sky, the elms with their sounding birds; he wanted to hold them with the unending forgiveness of a father to his prodigal, errant but beloved son. Isabelle and the cruel dead of the war; his lost mother, his friend Weir: nothing was immoral or beyond redemption, all could be brought together, understood in the long perspective of forgiveness. As he clung to the wood, he wanted also to be forgiven for all he had done; he longed for the unity of the world's creation to melt his sins and anger, because his soul was joined to it. His body shook with the passion of the love that had found him, from which he had been exiled in the blood and the flesh of long killing.

Kate, the mother of thirteen, is forty-nine; delicately made; her skin creamlike where the weather has not got at it. She is smaller than several of her children. Her legs and feet, like those of most women in this country, are beautifully shaped by shoelessness on the earth. Her eyes, which are watchful not at all for herself but for her family, are those of a small animal which expects another kick as a matter of course and which is too numbed to dodge it or even much care. She calls her children "my babies." They call her mama, treat her protectively as they might a deformed child, and love her carelessly and gaily. An old photograph shows her fiber and bearing as a young woman, and perhaps it is the relinquishment of that unusual spirit, under the beating and breakage of the past two decades, that has made her now the most abandoned of these people: more than any of them, she is lost in some solitary region of her own. She is only half sane.

Not every gun owner is as sane or self-possessed as the plumber from Sutherland Springs, after all, and if, as the NRA argues, law-abiding Americans should be and must be armed to protect themselves against the lawbreakers who threaten our safety, vast numbers of fearful, often irrational people will be empowered to make split-second decisions that will inevitably lead to more killings of unarmed strangers. To put a gun in everyone’s hand would turn the United States into a country of soldiers and thrust us back to the early colonial days when every citizen was a musket-bearing warrior and did lifetime service in the local militia. Is that what we want from America today—the right to live in a society of permanent armed struggle? If the problem is too many bad men with guns, would it not be wiser to take those guns away from them rather than arm the so-called good men, who in many if not most instances are considerably less than good, and thereby eliminate the problem altogether, for if the bad men had no guns, why would the good men need them? As my mother used to say to me whenever I spun off into one of my wild, passionate speculations about how to improve the world: “Dream on, Paul.

Recipe for a Perfect Wife, the Novel INGREDIENTS 3 cups editors extraordinaire: Maya Ziv, Lara Hinchberger, Helen Smith 2 cups agent-I-couldn’t-do-this-without: Carolyn Forde (and the Transatlantic Literary Agency) 1½ cup highly skilled publishing teams: Dutton US, Penguin Random House Canada (Viking) 1 cup PR and marketing wizards: Kathleen Carter (Kathleen Carter Communications), Ruta Liormonas, Elina Vaysbeyn, Maria Whelan, Claire Zaya 1 cup women of writing coven: Marissa Stapley, Jennifer Robson, Kate Hilton, Chantel Guertin, Kerry Clare, Liz Renzetti ½ cup author-friends-who-keep-me-sane: Mary Kubica, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Amy E. Reichert, Colleen Oakley, Rachel Goodman, Hannah Mary McKinnon, Rosey Lim ½ cup friends-with-talents-I-do-not-have: Dr. Kendra Newell, Claire Tansey ¼ cup original creators of the Karma Brown Fan Club: my family and friends, including my late grandmother Miriam Christie, who inspired Miriam Claussen; my mom, who is a spectacular cook and mother; and my dad, for being the wonderful feminist he is 1 tablespoon of the inner circle: Adam and Addison, the loves of my life ½ tablespoon book bloggers, bookstagrammers, authors, and readers: including Andrea Katz, Jenny O’Regan, Pamela Klinger-Horn, Melissa Amster, Susan Peterson, Kristy Barrett, Lisa Steinke, Liz Fenton 1 teaspoon vintage cookbooks: particularly the Purity Cookbook, for the spark of inspiration 1 teaspoon loyal Labradoodle: Fred Licorice Brown, furry writing companion Dash of Google: so I could visit the 1950s without a time machine METHOD: Combine all ingredients into a Scrivener file, making sure to hit Save after each addition.

WHOEVER YOU ARE, WHEREVER YOU ARE..I'M STARTING TO THINK WE'RE A LOT ALIKE. HUMAN BEINGS SPINNING ON BLACKNESS. ALL WANTING TO BE SEEN, TOUCHED, HEARD, PAID ATTENTION TO. MY LOVED ONES ARE EVERYTHING TO ME HERE. IN THE LAST YEAR OR 3 I'VE SCREAMED AT MY CREATOR. SCREAMED AT CLOUDS IN THE SKY. FOR SOME EXPLANATION. MERCY MAYBE. FOR PEACE OF MIND TO RAIN LIKE MANNA SOMEHOW. 4 SUMMERS AGO, I MET SOMEBODY. I WAS 19 YEARS OLD. HE WAS TOO. WE SPENT THAT SUMMER, AND THE SUMMER AFTER, TOGETHER. EVERYDAY ALMOST. AND ON THE DAYS WE WERE TOGETHER, TIME WOULD GLIDE. MOST OF THE DAY I'D SEE HIM, AND HIS SMILE. I'D HEAR HIS CONVERSATION AND HIS SILENCE..UNTIL IT WAS TIME TO SLEEP. SLEEP I WOULD OFTEN SHARE WITH HIM. BY THE TIME I REALIZED I WAS IN LOVE, IT WAS MALIGNANT. IT WAS HOPELESS. THERE WAS NO ESCAPING, NO NEGOTIATING WITH THE FEELING. NO CHOICE. IT WAS MY FIRST LOVE, IT CHANGED MY LIFE. BACK THEN, MY MIND WOULD WANDER TO THE WOMEN I HAD BEEN WITH, THE ONES I CARED FOR AND THOUGHT I WAS IN LOVE WITH. I REMINISCED ABOUT THE SENTIMENTAL SONGS I ENJOYED WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER.. THE ONES I PLAYED WHEN I EXPERIENCED A GIRLFRIEND FOR THE FIRST TIME. I REALIZED THEY WERE WRITTEN IN A LANGUAGE I DID NOT YET SPEAK. I REALIZED TOO MUCH, TOO QUICKLY. IMAGINE BEING THROWN FROM A PLANE. I WASN'T IN A PLANE THOUGH. I WAS IN A NISSAN MAXIMA, THE SAME CAR I PACKED UP WITH BAGS AND DROVE TO LOS ANGELES IN. I SAT THERE AND TOLD MY FRIEND HOW I FELT. I WEPT AS THE WORDS LEFT MY MOUTH. I GRIEVED FOR THEM, KNOWING I COULD NEVER TAKE THEM BACK FOR MYSELF. HE PATTED MY BACK. HE SAID KIND THINGS. HE DID HIS BEST, BUT HE WOULDN'T ADMIT THE SAME. HE HAD TO GO BACK INSIDE SOON, IT WAS LATE AND HIS GIRLFRIEND WAS WAITING FOR HIM UPSTAIRS. HE WOULDN'T TELL ME THE TRUTH ABOUT HIS FEELINGS FOR ME FOR ANOTHER 3 YEARS. I FELT LIKE I'D ONLY IMAGINED RECIPROCITY FOR YEARS. NOW IMAGINE BEING THROWN FROM A CLIFF. NO, I WASN'T ON A CLIFF, I WAS STILL IN MY CAR TELLING MYSELF IT WAS GONNA BE FINE AND TO TAKE DEEP BREATHS. I TOOK THE BREATHS AND CARRIED ON. I KEPT UP A PECULIAR FRIENDSHIP WITH HIM BECAUSE I COULDN'T IMAGINE KEEPING UP MY LIFE WITHOUT HIM. I STRUGGLED TO MASTER MYSELF AND MY EMOTIONS. I WASN'T ALWAYS SUCCESSFUL. THE DANCE WENT ON.. I KEPT THE RHYTHM FOR SEVERAL SUMMERS AFTER. IT'S WINTER NOW. I'M TYPING THIS ON A PLANE BACK TO LOS ANGELES FROM NEW ORLEANS. I FLEW HOME FOR ANOTHER MARRED CHRISTMAS. I HAVE A WINDOWSEAT. IT'S DECEMBER 27, 2011. BY NOW I'VE WRITTEN TWO ALBUMS, THIS BEING THE SECOND. I WROTE TO KEEP MYSELF BUSY AND SANE. I WANTED TO CREATE WORLDS THAT WERE ROSIER THAN MINE. I TRIED TO CHANNEL OVERWHELMING EMOTIONS. I'M SURPRISED AT HOW FAR ALL OF IT HAS TAKEN ME. BEFORE WRITING THIS I'D TOLD SOME PEOPLE MY STORY. I'M SURE THESE PEOPLE KEPT ME ALIVE, KEPT ME SAFE.. SINCERELY. THESE ARE THE FOLKS I WANNA THANK FROM THE FLOOR OF MY HEART. EVERYONE OF YOU KNOWS WHO YOU ARE.. GREAT HUMANS, PROBABLY ANGELS. I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NOW, AND THAT'S ALRITE. I DON'T HAVE ANY SECRETS I NEED KEPT ANYMORE. THERE'S PROBABLY SOME SMALL SHIT STILL, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. I WAS NEVER ALONE, AS MUCH AS I FELT LIKE IT. AS MUCH AS I STILL DO SOMETIMES. I NEVER WAS. I DON'T THINK I EVER COULD BE. THANKS. TO MY FIRST LOVE, I'M GRATEFUL FOR YOU. GRATEFUL THAT EVEN THOUGH IT WASN'T WHAT I HOPED FOR AND EVEN THOUGH IT WAS NEVER ENOUGH, IT WAS. SOME THINGS NEVER ARE.. AND WE WERE. I WON'T FORGET YOU. I WON'T FORGET THE SUMMER. I'LL REMEMBER WHO I WAS WHEN I MET YOU. I'LL REMEMBER WHO YOU WERE AND HOW WE'VE BOTH CHANGED AND STAYED THE SAME. I'VE NEVER HAD MORE RESPECT FOR LIFE AND LIVING THAN I HAVE RIGHT NOW. MAYBE IT TAKES A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE TO FEEL ALIVE. THANKS. TO MY MOTHER, YOU RAISED ME STRONG. I KNOW I'M ONLY BRAVE BECAUSE YOU WERE FIRST.. SO THANK YOU. ALL OF YOU. FOR EVERYTHING GOOD. I FEEL LIKE A FREE MAN. IF I LISTEN CLOSELY.. I CAN HEAR THE SKY FALLING TOO. - FRANK

Iris dodges the question artfully. "I won't ever make the mistake of trying to put myself in his head. That is not a place any sane person should be." Then she laughs to herself. "I assume his mother spent a good amount of time there.

He finds a way to blame my mother for whatever’s wrong. If I’m mad at him, it must be because of the attitudes I got from my mother. And if he’s done something wrong—however unlikely that may be—we’ve driven him to it, my mother and me. He thinks any sane man would go berserk, sooner or later, in our company.” —Trudy, St. Paul, MN

If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.

eye combination my mother always made a fuss about. Maybe that’s why my skin crawled every time someone commented on how attractive a couple we were. It was more a reflection on me than us. He lifts his hand and moves my hair off my forehead. The gesture is intimate, but I’m too stunned to stop him. He brushes his thumb over the scar on my temple. “I was worried about you. You wouldn’t let me see you in the hospital. Or after?” A sigh escapes before I can school my features into something a little more… regretful. “Well, I was embarrassed.” That’s a lie. I just didn’t want to face whatever the fuck emotional roller coaster I was riding the last six months. Seriously. My life went from normal to shit in a split second. Adding Jack—and the life that I thought I had, the one that seemed to go up in a puff of smoke when I woke up in the hospital—would’ve been more pain than I was ready to accept. “Violet!” I step away from Jack, ignoring his wounded expression, and turn to my other friends. Half the dance team is here, and they all crowd around me. Someone pulls at my coffee-stained blouse, and another swoops in to clean the floor where my cup dropped. I had forgotten, in my Jack-shock. “Lucky it wasn’t hot.” Willow nudges me. “Luck and I aren’t on speaking terms.” She visited faithfully every day while I was stuck in the hospital. Kept me sane, kept me looped in to the gossip. She’s the only one who knows what I went through, and I’m keeping it that way. I’m not in the habit of airing my dirty laundry—or my newfound nightmares. I’ve been plagued by bright lights, crunching metal, and snapping bones. She rolls her eyes at my luck comment. “You need to change. We’re taking you out.” Oh boy. My first instinct is to say no, but honestly? I could use a bit of normalcy. My therapist—the talk one, not the physical one—said something about getting back into a routine. Well, for the last two years, I’ve gone out with my girls on Friday nights. There’s nothing more normal than that. I’m actually looking forward to it. She leads the way to the bedroom I haven’t been in since… before. She steps aside and lets me do the honors. Opening the door is like cracking into a time capsule. Fucking devastating. Willow stands behind me, her hand on my shoulder, as I stare around at the remnants of the person I used to be. If I wasn’t aware of how different I was after six months away, I am now. Mentally, physically. There are still clothes that I left on the floor. My chair is pulled out and covered in clothes. There’s a pile of books that I had planned to conquer over the summer in the center of the desk. My bed is made. “I kept the door open

You are not crazy. You are perfectly sane. Your perceptions are valid and right. You can trust your own reality.

Stanley forced a smile to his lips at the memory of the onesided romance; it was silly, after all, a stupid childhood crush. Who’d fall in love with a fictional character? That was the kind of thing you laughed about as an adult. Or at least Harriet had thought so. He couldn’t quite do it, though. Couldn’t quite see it as a joke. It had felt too real, too raw and wild and fierce, for him to dismiss it even now. It was love, of a sort, stunted and unformed as it was. For a time, it had kept him sane.

Why a monk? How can he wear orange and breathe slowly all the time. Sometimes I’m convinced the human race as a whole is pathetic in it stupidity, but I’m beginning to understand why we’ve survived this long. We have the remarkable ability to get something out of nothing, explanations out of mystery, truth out of air. The great religions and causes are the best magic tricks in history, conjuring neither pigeons nor rabbits. Even an elephant out of a top hat would pale in comparison to the stunning answers we come up with to calm ourselves (or, as the case may be, enrage, justify, avenge ourselves). You don’t need to be a Buddhist, or a Christian, or a Muslim; the truth isn’t found only in ancient books. It can be anywhere, depending on your eyes. If I’m to believe the monk, and I do, we mould our lives according to dreams and visions whose substance is poorly imagined. Our truths are as numerous and unpredictable as wind currents, as invisible, as undeniable. The only prop necessary for the whole show is faith. With faith, you will have your truth, no matter how absurd it may appear to others. If you have a vision, you’re obliged to believe in it even if your neighbours think you are stark raving mad. What must the monk’s mother say of her eyebrowless, malnourished son, a perfectly sane young man living on rice and vegetables and pure Asian light? He relinquished his seaside, his clothes, his name, but he knows what he’s received in exchange. I like the image of him in my mind, the grey eyes, skin, mouth, egg-bald head rising out of orange sheets. He is so convinced, so convincing. I wonder about people like him, and the people who are monks without robes, the ones who wonder around in the noisier world, they’re gods in their pockets. Bertrand Russell was once asked if he would die for his beliefs. He laughed and said, “Of course not. After all, I may be wrong.” I laugh myself, thinking how wrong I might be. But it doesn’t matter. Belief, and the faith feeds itself; truth shines out like a new born moon.

The genes that make you shy, resilient, anxious, exuberant are shaped by maternal behaviour. If maternal behaviour changes, the genes change. Fearful baby rats were put with nurturing mother rats and were licked rather than ignored and their actual genetic expression changed, proving we’re not held captive by our genes. (I

He was a little older than she was and his mother was Sri Lankan, father English, I remember that, too. They fell madly in love. The love of her life, Rebekah always called him. She was only sixteen, perhaps seventeen, but she was a very physical girl.” Avigail chuckled. “It was the memory of him, and his likeness in their child, that kept her sane through those years in the camp. She talked about finding him again after the war, marrying and having more children, a house, white picket fence, the works. You know, it seems strange in hindsight, but we always believed we would survive. Both of us did. It was not until Rebekah was murdered that I think I truly lost faith.

places, Ramsay . . . Ramsay . . . Ramsay . . . the last frail repeat fading into nothing. He was the more reserved of the two dogs and it had taken longer to gain his trust. Fair or not, he was her favorite because of it. Sadie had always been wary of easy affection. It was a trait she’d also recognized in Nancy Bailey, Maggie’s mother; one she suspected had brought them closer together. A folie à deux it was called, a shared madness, two otherwise sane people encouraging each other in the same delusion. Sadie could

That’s it, Johnny Reb,” Caleb challenged. “Turn tail and run.” With a bellow Joss whirled and came at Caleb with all the restraint of a runaway freight train. His powerful fist caught Caleb squarely under the chin and sent him flying backwards into the grass, past his mother’s headstone. Blood trickled down Caleb’s chin, but he grinned at his brother as he got to his feet. “I’m still here, Joss,” he said. “And I’m not going anywhere until you sit down and talk with me like a sane man.” Joss’s thick chest heaved with the effort of his breathing. Sweat glistened on his face, and his hand was still knotted into a fist, but his eyes were wet. “Damn you,” he spat, and then he walked away. This

From now on she would have to keep her love for aunt a secret from Mother as well. Leila had come to understand that feeling of tenderness must always be hidden- that such things could only be revealed behind closed doors and never spoken about afterwards.

It is only after you have had a nine-month pregnancy, laboured to get the child out, fed it, cared for it, sat with it until 3 a.m., risen with it at 6 a.m., swooned with love for it, and been moved to furious tears by it that you really understand just how important it is for a child to be wanted. And how motherhood is a game you must enter with as much energy, goodwill and happiness as possible. And the most important thing of all, of course, is to be wanted, desired and cared for by a reasonably sane, stable mother.

[Within the context of discussing anti-abortionists and the "socially acceptable" reasons for getting one.] It is only after you have had a nine-month pregnancy, laboured to get the child out, fed it, cared for it, sat with it until 3 a.m., risen with it at 6 a.m., swooned with love for it, and been moved to furious tears by it that you really understand just how important it is for a child to be wanted. And how motherhood is a game you must enter with as much energy, goodwill and happiness as possible. And the most important thing of all, of course, is to be wanted, desired and cared for by a reasonably sane, stable mother.

Brother fought against brother, fathers swung axes against sons in front of their mothers. An invisible force divided people, split families, addled brains. Only the elders remained sane, scurrying from one side to the other, begging the combatants to make peace. They cried in their squeaky voices that there was enough war in the world without starting one in the village.

But the matriarchal complex, in both its positive and negative aspects, has by no means disappeared from the modern Western scene. Its positive aspect, the idea of human equality, of the sacredness of life, of all men’s right to share in the fruits of nature, found expression in the ideas of natural law, humanism, enlightenment philosophy and the objectives of democratic socialism. Common to all these ideas is the concept that all men are children of Mother Earth and have a right to be nourished by her, and to enjoy happiness without having to prove this right by the achievement of any particular status. The brotherhood of all men implies that they are all the sons of the same mother, who have an inalienable right to love and happiness. In this concept, the incestuous tie to the mother is eliminated. By the mastery over nature as it manifests itself in industrial production, man frees himself from his fixation to the bonds of blood and soil, he humanizes nature and naturalizes himself.

Oh! if all this world I have walked in had been as sane as my mother was.

In the proper fashion of divorced mothers, during her sane, lucid moments my mother would, of course, pay lip service to the idea that I ought to have a relationship with my father. Everybody needs and deserves a mommy and a daddy. In reality, she didn’t want me to get too close to him. She wanted him around, but only in his rightful, Saturday-afternoon place. And who could blame her? How could my mom tell me, whom she loved more than anyone else in the world, that she wanted me to have a good relationship with my father, whom she hated more than anyone else on earth, and not get found out? Ditto my dad.

We don't fortunately need those we love to be sane (or we would be forever alone). We merely need them to be able in their calmer moments - to admit to their strangeness with a degree of grace and good humour. They would ideally be able to tell us, before they have hurt us too badly, some of what is likely to be most difficult about living close to them. They will warn us about their bad moods after work, their awkwardness around their mother or their tendency to panic at airports. Their confessions won't magically remove every problem, but they will hugely attenuate their impact. We are infinitely more likely to forgive someone who has a good sense of what they need to be forgiven for than someone who maintains their innocence against all odds.

When you’re the sane brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your hands—the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you’re into both survival of the fittest and being your brother’s keeper—if you’ve promised your dying mother—then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman’s gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the indifference of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin—the guy who beat the biochemical rap.

Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty -- they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?

Sometimes I have very dark thoughts about my mother—thoughts no sane daughter should ever have.

Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones—a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A windscreen wiper. A mother’s marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered.

Sometimes both parents were toxic and would act as a tag team and defend each other (“Why do you criticize your mother?”). This would be particularly damaging and painful, because the child would not have a “reality check” of any kind within the family system. This is a dynamic that continued into adulthood for several respondents.

I should say that a manual worker, if he is in steady work and drawing good wages — an ‘if which gets bigger and bigger — has a better chance of being happy than an ‘educated’ man. His home life seems to fall more naturally into a sane and comely shape. I have often been struck by the peculiar easy completeness, the perfect symmetry as it were, of a working-class interior at its best. Especially on winter evenings after tea, when the fire glows in the open range and dances mirrored in the steel fender, when Father, in shirt-sleeves, sits in the rocking chair at one side of the fire reading the racing finals, and Mother sits on the other with her sewing, and the children are happy with a pennorth of mint humbugs, and the dog lolls roasting himself on the rag mat — it is a good place to be in, provided that you can be not only in it but sufficiently of it to be taken for granted.

Because children cannot make sense of this phenomenon, they will not only not label it as narcissistic or toxic, but also will take responsibility for it—blaming themselves for not being a good-enough child, because, if they were, then maybe their mother or father would be happy.

motherly love (Hebrew: rachamin, from rechem = womb) the relationship between the two persons involved is one of inequality; the child is helpless and dependent on the mother. In order to grow, it must become more and more independent, until he does not need mother any more. Thus the mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother’s side, and yet this very love must help the child to grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent. It is easy for any mother to love her child before this process of separation has begun—but it is the task in which most fail, to love the child and at the same time to let it go—and to want to let it go.

There are smart people and wise people. Smart people can tutor you in English or help you with math. Wise people teach you about life. It’s best if you have both smart and wise people in your circle. That’s not the case for me. That’s why I flunked algebra, but I know it’s possible and sane to love a broken mother.

It can’t work. I have obligations. I can’t afford a relationship right now. And you’re looking for something intense, passionate, forever, some eternal bond. I’m just not like that. I don’t have all that much to give anyone.” Her fingers twisted together in agitation; he felt his heart twist in answer. The smile deep in his soul at her foolish words never found its way to his face. Shea had a passionate nature, and her need for him was as great as his need for her. She knew it, and it terrified her. More than anything, that knowledge was what made her determined to run from him. She had taught herself to be a solitary person, had no idea how to share her life. She would never, could never be like her mother. “Are you listening to me, Jacques?” He moved closer, crowded her slender body. His arms swept her to him, nearly crushing her. “Of course I am listening. I hear that you are afraid. I feel it.” His warm breath caressed her neck. The way he held her was completely protective, gentle, tender. “I am afraid, too. I have no past, Shea. Only a living hell that shaped a madman. Those people you call my family mean nothing to me. I do not trust them. Any one of them could be the betrayer.” He laid his head over hers, a soothing gesture of unity. “I cannot always distinguish reality from the madness. There is only you, my love, to keep me sane. If you choose to desert me, I fear for myself and any who dare to come near.

Work is good," he said to himself. "Work is healthful and right. It keeps men sane and well balanced. No one with health and strength should step out of the ranks.

It was naïve of Federal Reserve heads to truly believe that Wall Street and other financial sectors could regulate themselves! That’s like believing a four-year-old will take just one cookie from the jar if the mother is not looking and will share that cookie evenly with siblings (though I am willing to bet that the four-year-old would behave more ethically than a large investment bank).

This world and yonder world are incessantly giving birth: every cause is a mother, its effect the child. When the effect is born, it too becomes a cause and gives birth to wondrous effects. These causes are generation on generation, but it needs a very well lighted eye to see the links in their chain. RUMI