My mother did like to make clothes, and in I think the worst picture I've ever seen of myself - I must have been eight or nine - she'd dressed me in a matching t-shirt and Bermuda shorts ensemble which I think looked like somebody had thrown up all o...
Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother's...
Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, a...
This is our sacred land, Bharat, a land whose glories are sung by the Gods, a land visualized by Mahayogi Aurobindo as the living manifestation of the Divine Mother of the universe, the Jaganmaataa, the Aadishakti, the Mahaamaayaa, the Mahaadurgaa, W...
Both my parents were agnostic. My mother was kind of a Buddhist. She had some spiritual tendencies, but they were kind of flaky - New Agey, you know? Which is partly why I'm suspicious of that sort of thing. I'm skeptical of any spiritual practice th...
When Eleanor was a little girl, she'd thought her mom looked like a queen, like the star of some fairy tale. Not a princess - princesses are just pretty. Eleanor's mother was beautiful. She was tall and stately, with broad shoulders and an elegant wa...
I used to shake my head when I heard about mothers who were shocked - shocked! - when their kids came out. I didn't understand how they had missed seeing something so essential when looking at their children. But too many parents see only what they w...
You asked me in Paris how many women I'd loved. I said one. I should have said two." He cupped her cheek, his thumb rubbing over her bottom lip. "As a child I loved my mother, and as a man I love you.
We as human beings appear to be in the most adverse stages in our evolution. How can the Mother Earth survive when the souls of Her sons are tainted with avarice, and the very minds which shape Her fate are dominated by ego? Minds that are prone to p...
There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My mother, who had organized the party, told me t...
Colinialism hardly ever exploits the whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natrual resources, which it extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the col...
My father respected and admired my mother and was a person who was always standing by my side, encouraging me to do more and believed in my capacity. So in that sense, my own experience was very good in becoming an empowered woman. From early on, I c...
I would say I'm black because my parents said I'm black. I'm black because my mother's black. I'm black because I grew up in a family of all black people. I knew I was black because I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. And my parents, as part of t...
I was a mother who worked ridiculously hard to keep catastrophe at bay. I didn't allow my kids to eat hamburgers for fear of E. coli. I didn't allow them to play with rope, string, balloons - anything that might strangle them. They had to bite grapes...
Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn't know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. ...
I had to come out to my mother three times over a twelve-year period, but I first came out to her when I was sixteen. It didn't go over so well, because I grew up in the Pentecostal Church. It was a very strict environment. She has since done a lot o...
Destiny. To believe that a life is meant for a single purpose, one must also believe in a common fate. Father to daughter, brother to sister, mother to child. Blood ties can be as unyielding as they are eternal. But it is our bonds of choice that tru...
We walk on the ground and give sparse recognition to the mud that will be the eternal homes for the bodies that we praise so much. Ground might not worth much but it holds billions of history and some of humanity's greatest treasures, One day it will...
The prince's official job description as king will be 'defender of the faith,' which currently means the state-financed absurdity of the Anglican Church, but he has more than once said publicly that he wants to be anointed as defender of all faiths�...
Well, Jack, we have taken the Macedonian, and your share of the prize, if we get her in safely, may be two hundred dollars; what will you do with it?” Stephen Decatur, commanding the frigate United States, North Atlantic, near the Azores Islands, 1...
The Daughter was weary at her spinning, and reflected aloud, "What if we really could spin coarse straw into fine, pure strands of gold?" "If you could accomplish that miracle," her mother admonished, "the responsibility it would entail would tax and...
