Mother Daughter Relationship Quotes

“If unloving mothers were able to see their behavious as abusive, they either would stop behaving that way or they would get help for their dysfunction. But many cannot: instead, they deny it, to themselves, their families, and the world at large, in order to avoid a sense of guilt, to avoid having to make changes in their lives, or to avoid the bruising awareness that they, too, were unloved children.”
― Victoria Secunda, When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life

“You and I are extremely alike. Sometimes people who are alike don’t get along too well. Qualities that other people would respect, they take for granted in each other, and qualities that they wish they could curb in themselves, seem magnified in the other person. It’s like looking into a hypercritical mirror.”
― J.W. Lynne, Above the Sky

“I kiss her on the forehead and make her a promise. "It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

“Twenty years from now, would that be me? Would I be resigned to my fate, pushing my daughter toward the light so she could be free? Or pulling her down so I wouldn’t be along in the dark?”
― Yamile Saied Méndez, Furia

“I have my fingerprints all over you.
& I don't need the world to see them

to know that they're there.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“But bruises on your mother's body are hard to miss when you embrace her, and she gasps in pain.”
― Tanvi Berwah, Monsters Born and Made

“A mother's least favourite child always knows that's what they are.”
― Alice Feeney, Daisy Darker

“For a split moment, time stopped as I was faced with the rugged beauty of my mother. There she stood in her tattered dress, her bare feet almost completely
buried in the sand. Across her shoulder lay two skinned rabbits, which she had captured for us to eat. In her hand, she carried a single, tallow candle, which was stubbornly sparking its fire into the sky.”
― Susan L. Marshall, Adira and the Dark Horse

“I stared silently at the flame, allowing it to soothe my pounding heart. It was light, it was life and it was connected to my mother.”
― Susan L. Marshall, Adira and the Dark Horse

“I knew it was a daily fight for her to stay clean. I just didn’t realize I was the reason she fights.”
― Angie Thomas, On the Come Up

“I was angry and would have liked to quarrel with her; that was a good thing to separate on; she believed one thing and I believed another; I had a right to stick to my opinion. Besides then I would be free and I would have all of my own money. But I thought again; she had about the hardest life I had ever heard of.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“As a parent, Lillian had always been lively and playful, prone to leaving clutter in her wake, sometimes talking too loudly in her enthusiasm, and always demonstrative in her affection. A let's-try-it-and-see-what-happens sort of mother. If Merritt had been forced to offer a criticism, it would have been that as a child, she'd sometimes been disappointed about all the rules her mother hadn't known and couldn't have cared less about.
When Merritt had asked her the proper dinnertime etiquette for when one discovered something like a bit of bone or a cherry stone in a mouthful of food, Mama had said cheerfully, "Hanged if I know. I just sneak it back to the edge of the plate."
"Should I use a fork or fingers?"
"There's not really a right way to do it, darling, just be discreet."
"Mama, there's always a right way.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Disguise

“In retrospect, however, her mother's irreverence might have been one of her greatest gifts as a parent. Such as the day when Merritt had run crying to her because a group of boys hadn't wanted her to play rounders with them.
Lillian had hugged and comforted her, and said, "I'll go tell them to give you a turn."
"No, Mama," Merritt had sobbed. "They don't want me to play because I'm not good at it. I mostly can't hit the ball, and when I do, it doesn't go anywhere. They said I have baby arms." The indignity of that had been intolerable.
But Mama, who'd always understood the fragility of a child's pride, had curved her fingers around Merritt's upper arm and said, "Make a muscle for me." After feeling Merritt's biceps, her mother had lowered to her haunches until their faces were level. "You have very strong arms, Merritt," she'd said decisively. "You're as strong as any of those boys. You and I are going to practice until you're able to hit that blasted ball over all their heads."
For many an afternoon after that, Mama had helped her to learn the right stance, and how to transfer her weight to the front foot during the swing, and how to follow through. They had developed her eye-hand coordination and had practiced until the batting skills felt natural. And the next time Merritt played rounders, she'd scored more points than anyone else in the game.
Of the thousands of embraces Mama had given her throughout childhood, few stood out in Merritt's mind as much as the feel of her arms guiding her in a batting stance. I want you to attack the ball, Merritt. Be fierce."
Not everyone would understand, but "Be fierce" was one of the best things her mother had ever told her.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Disguise

“My mother and I speak different languages. Her native language is Japanese. My native language is English. This might seem like a mundane fact about us. It’s not. It dictates everything. Because even though my mother understands and speaks English at a highly functional level, there are places inside me she can’t reach, nuances of thought and emotion I can’t express in words that make sense to her.”
― Elizabeth Miki Brina, Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir

“By the time we're here at the Panda Express on Cahuenga Boulevard, this way of communicating--polite small talk with an undercurrent of pain and resentment--has been our new reality for several months, enough time that it's not new anymore.”
― Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died

“The thought of having a relationship with my kids like the one I have with my mum, a scam on both sides, makes me want to vomit.”
― Celine Saintclare, Sugar, Baby

“Places
Times
Weather
All these drew up my mother inside my thoughts,
Rain especially.
Falling past the trees, each drop throwing replicas into the air.
In the same manner my tears would fall from my face.
And so I searched for her in my dreams.
And watched her walk away from me in real life.
The anger in her eyes and her coldness that was who she was,
Yet she walked away from me in real life.
I knew this in the diminishment of my life..
Because she had been the nourishment of my life..
I don’t know if I was the one who packed my bags and left...
Or she was the one who left me.
But thoughts of her began fading from my mind
and I stopped looking for her in my dreams.”
― Ayanda Ngema, They Raped Me: So, Now What?

“I knew I wasn't dealing with a person; I was dealing with concepts, and once I investigated the concepts about my mother, I had unraveled all my concepts about everyone and everything.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind At Home With Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around

“Mom, I think you've done enough experimenting. All of these batches have been delicious."
I dip the other, unbitten end into a small dish of sweet chili sauce.
"You never know what people will want," she says. "Some like it with pork, some like it with chicken, some like it with shrimp."
Our post-work evening has been spent testing out different batches of lumpia for the upcoming Maui Food Festival. Ever since I told her we'd be competing to keep our spot on Makena Road, she's been in a food-prepping frenzy. Every night after work for the past week she's spent hours testing out new dishes, tweaking ingredients to get the flavors just right. Yesterday it was adjusting the level of fish sauce in the pansit, then attempting to perfect the ratio of rice noodle to meat and vegetables.”
― Sarah Smith, Simmer Down

“She did like books and reading, but sometimes she just wanted to talk to her mom. She listened, though, because her mother never failed to find the exact-right perfect book, and she read it in a way that made you want to listen forever.
As always, her mother was right. There was a book for everything. Somewhere in the vast Library of the Universe, as Natalie thought of it, her mom could find a book that embodied exactly the things Natalie was worrying about.
And sure enough, Maya Running, about a girl from India whose family didn't fit in, did make her feel better. Like she wasn't the only kid in the world with a different kind of family. You're never alone when you're reading a book, Mom liked to say.”
― Susan Wiggs, The Lost and Found Bookshop

“There's no need to charm your mother, she thought. Which is both a compliment and a burden.”
― Jane Caro, The Mother

“Lisa does not think about possible outcomes because a a world in whcih Claudia is not cannot be imagined. Claudia simply is, ever has been and always will be.”
― Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger

“One time, they went to the city to stand on the bat bridge at dusk, watching in horrified wonder as thousands of bats swooped into the orange sky. Her mother used to set aside one entire Sunday every April to take a drive into the countryside to look at the bluebonnets. They both found the glorious fields of deep indigo flowers mesmerizing.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“We spend the rest of the night baking, using the ingredients I have left over to make another batch of So Sorry Blondies--- this one modified with extra peanut butter, Paige's favorite. We turn on an old Taylor Swift album and eat the dough raw and catch up on each other's lives. We talk about how she and my dad came up with Big League Burger in the first place, and weird dessert hybrids we want to try in the city, and fall asleep watching Waitress with fingers still sticky from chocolate and toffee.”
― Emma Lord, Tweet Cute

“When my mother looks in my direction, I feel cold. She is a woman who never hides her seasons, she is winter all year round.”
― Alice Feeney, Daisy Darker

“She knew a lot about nature, and although she wasn't one for volunteering information or lecturing her daughter, she could always be counted on to notice and share small instances of beauty. The curled side of a gray-green gum leaf, a delicate discarded nest, the way an Illawarra flame tree in flower was a firework against a deep blue sky. They never managed a trip down to the beach without amassing a collection of seaweed and shells and elegant pieces of driftwood that would then be carted home and displayed on windowsills or turned, by Polly, into a striking mobile, or even, on one occasion, a spidery dreamcatcher for Jess.”
― Kate Morton, Homecoming

“At a gut level, she knew this illness was one more ploy by her mother—one more ploy to keep Karen under her mother's thumb.”
― Circa24, Thomas Hardy was an Optimist: A Collection of Short Stories From the Plague Years.

“Most narcissists lack the capacity to give significant, authentic love and empathy, and you have no choice but to deal with this reality. Accepting that your own mother has this limited capacity is the first step. Let go of the expectation that it will ever be different. Most daughters I know have gone through long periods in their lives not understanding this, always wishing and hoping that the next encounter with their mother will be different.”
― Karyl McBride, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers

“When I think of my mother’s violent temper, outbursts of affection, and reproachful attitude, I try not to see them as facets of her personality but to relate them to her own story and social background. This way of writing, which seems to bring me closer to the truth, relieves me of the dark, heavy burden of personal remembrance by establishing a more objective approach. And yet something deep down inside refuses to yield and wants me to remember my mother purely in emotional terms—affection or tears—without searching for an explanation.”
― Annie Ernaux, A Woman's Story

“My mother was always unpredictable. She had unexpected kindness, then shut herself in again. I knew those attentions and their intermittence. I tried to win them, but it wasn't for merit or guilt that they arrived or were absent. If I had known that when I was younger, I wouldn't have wasted the effort: if I had known that her affection didn't depend on me.”
― Donatella Di Pietrantonio, Borgo Sud