#moth

The poets say some moths will do anything out of love for a flame [...] The moth takes off again, and we both step back, because he's circling at eye level now and seems to have lost rudder control, smacking into the wall on each round. He circles lower and lower, spinning around the candle in tighter revolutions, like a soap sud over an open drain. A few times he seems to touch the flame, but dances off unhurt. Then he ignites like a ball of hair, curling into an oily puff of fumes with a hiss. The candle flame flickers and dims for a moment, then burns as bright as before. Moth Smoke Lingers. ↗

— Mohsin Hamid

#insects #love #moth #smoke #star-crossed

But a mother-son relationship is not a coequal one, is it? He is lonely with only you just as you are lonely with only him. ↗

— Mary Balogh

#mother #son #love

I wondered if perhaps I'd gone mad. I had known this man less than twenty-four hours and already I wanted to raise his children. ↗

— Lucy Robinson

#insanity #motherhood #love

Out loud I said I had two children. Silently I said three. I always felt like apologizing to her for that. ↗

— Alice Sebold

#mother #love

For the first time in this 11 years--I have come to love the darkness--for I believe now that it is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus' dakness and pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a "spiritual side of 'your work'"... (Mother Teresa, quoated in Kolodiejchuk, p. 208). ↗

— Brian Kolodiejchuk

#spirituality #suffering #love

One night when we were lying under the stars together she pointed to this beaming bright star beside the moon and said wherever she was in the world, whether we were together or apart, that I should remember her with that star because it would always be there-that it was her with me. ↗

— Rebecah McManus

#father #loss #love #moon #mother

The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated. ↗

— Washington Irving

#mother-s-love #love

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

— Julia Quinn

#motherhood #parenting-children #love

These stories had intrigued her with their strange mix of violence and love, so unlike the distant, passionless affection of her own mother. She thought, she hoped, that the handkerchief was something fantastic, like a piece of a tale, but real, and just for her, a symbol of the real, hidden love of her mother. ↗

— Shannon Hale

#mothers-and-daughters #love

Bertie stared at his mother. She spoils things, he thought. All she ever does is spoil things. He had not started this conversation, and it was not his fault that they were now talking about Grey Owl. He sounded rather a nice man to Bertie. Any why should he not dress up in feathers and live in the forests if that was what he wanted to do? It was typical of his mother to try to spoil Grey Owl's fun. ↗

— Alexander McCall Smith

#mothers #love