#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

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

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

So I'm smoking in the house, Mother said. And Bobbie's got a dog in her room. And your son Will's got an Injun in his. So there it is, Mother said. Like it or lump it! ↗

— Tom Spanbauer

#love

Acceptance is to love and embrace everything that we find within ourselves like a mother embraces her child. ↗

— Swami Dhyan Giten

#child #love #meditation #mother #spirituality

Catelyn wanted to run to him, to kiss his sweet brow, to wrap him in her arms so tightly that he would never come to harm.... ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#catelyn-stark #mother #mothers-love #robb #son

She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. Theorem, anti-theorem, corollary, anti-corollary. Underline it twice. It’s all there in the numbers. Listen to your mother. Listen to me, Joshua. Look me in the eyes. I have something to tell you. ↗

— Colum McCann

#armies #children #lessons #let-the-great-world-spin #loss

But deciding not to have children is a very, very hard decision for a woman to make: the atmosphere is worryingly inconducive to saying, "I choose not to," or "it all sounds a bit vile, tbh." We call these women "selfish" The inference of the word "childless" is negative: one of lack, and loss. We think of nonmothers as rangy lone wolves--rattling around, as dangerous as teenage boys or men. We make women feel that their narrative has ground to a halt in their thirities if they don't "finish things" properly and have children. ↗

— Caitlin Moran

#choice #danger #feminism #mothers #men