A Quote by Ruth Rendell

My mother was a Swede who grew up in Denmark. When I go there, I visit the street where she grew up and look at her house, which is still there, and the snowberry bush, from which she ate some berries and had to have her stomach pumped.
[My mother] was the oldest of two sisters and two brothers, and she grew up with her brothers, who were about her age. She grew up, to the age of ten, like a wild colt, and then all of a sudden that was over. They had forced on her her 'woman's destiny' by saying, 'This isn't done, this isn't good, this isn't worthy of a lady.'
I have to say, I grew up with fashion because my mother was a seamstress, and she had an atelier. She would cut the first pattern, and then she had people working for her. So I grew up in an atelier, watching people all around me sewing. I was fascinated.
My mother wasn't controlling at all. She was a stabilizing force who grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. Now it's the big circle game. Taking care of her is a great blessing for me. I'll tuck her into bed, kiss her on the cheek, wipe up the mess on her blouse from whatever she spilled.
For me, Shonda Rhimes is an amazing person that I look up to. She empowered a lot of her writers to go on and do other things while, at the same time, she made sure she kept her stamp on those things and grew her business.
My mother arrived in Brussels in 1938 from a small town near Krakow. But strangely enough, in 1942 or 1943, she was taken back to Auschwitz, which was just 30 miles from where she grew up. Her parents died there and a lot of her family.
I heard a story about a woman who grew up in Texas. When she was having trouble in her life, she would visit her grandmother, who lived nearby and always had a kind word and some wisdom to pass on. One day she was complaining to her grandmother about some situation and her grandmother just turned to her, smiled sadly, and said, "Sometimes, darlin', you've just got to rise above yourself in this life." I've remembered that wise advice many times as I've faced trouble in my life.
My grandmother spoiled my father rotten, and he grew up expecting women to do whatever he wanted. When he married my beautiful mother, Elsa, he expected her to give up her career as a champion ballroom dancer and become a good wife and mother, which she dutifully did.
My grandmother spoiled my father rotten and he grew up expecting women to do whatever he wanted. When he married my beautiful mother, Elsa, he expected her to give up her career as a champion ballroom dancer and become a good wife and mother, which she dutifully did.
I grew up on a suburban street with lace curtains and dull neighbours, so I made up stories to tell my friend, in which they became serial killers and burglars. She told her mother, who then told mine.
Kessa ran her fingers over her stomach. Flat. But was it flat enough? Not quite. She still had some way to go. Just to be safe, she told herself. Still, it was nice the way her pelvic bones rose like sharp hills on either side of her stomach. I love bones. Bones are beautiful.
Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off—all tears, fawning up at her, till she takes her in her arms… That’s how you look, Patroclus, streaming live tears.
I talked to my mother about it a lot. I asked her what it was like to grow up in New York and Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, and I asked her about a woman leaving her husband. I asked her about how she would feel about that woman, and my mother grew up in the Church Of God In Christ, and she told me that the woman might be isolated because the other women thought she might go and come after their husbands. That's how they thought then.
For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, "This is what I have made of it! This!" And what had she made of it? What, indeed?
She expected the pain, when it came. But she gasped at its sharpness; it was not like any pain she had felt before. He kissed her and slowed and would have stopped. But she laughed, and said that this one time she would consent to hurt, and bleed, at his touch. He smiled into her neck and kissed her again and she moved with him through the pain. The pain became a warmth that grew. Grew, and stopped her breath. And took her breath and her pain and her mind away from her body, so that there was nothing but her body and his body and the light and fire they made together.
My mother grew up strong. She was a charismatic leader among her peers, staging plays, organizing projects, raising money for charity; she was fiercely protective of her younger brother, with whom she shared a passion for jazz and rock and roll.
But she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.
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