Quotes About Grandmothers

When I was growing up in Russia, my grandmothers would cook the best pancakes in the world, the best meatballs, the best dumplings.

Although my father's mother, Nancy, has dementia, and her experiences gave me ideas for some of the scenes in the book, it was my mother's mother, Vera, who most influenced the character of Maud. Vera died in 2008, before I'd gotten very far into writing 'Elizabeth Is Missing,' but her voice is very like Maud's.

Human beings are disgustingly predictable, and this is as true of psychopaths as it is of grandmothers.

It was a very odd household, because the grandmothers were so different. Both of them had their own pianos. So it would be duelling pianos by grandmothers.

Everyone is influenced by those things that precede formal education, that come out of the blue and out of everyday life. Those excluded influences I call the grandmothers.

It's funny because the most sane women I've ever met are my mom and my grandmothers. I think you have to be incredibly sane and self-aware to function in relatively insane environments.

Fairy tales are about money, marriage, and men. They are the maps and manuals that are passed down from mothers and grandmothers to help them survive.

Both of my grandmothers were diagnosed with breast cancer - one is a survivor and one passed away.

And, most of all, these women remembered what their mothers and grandmothers had learned from the Romans, the Byzantines, the Turks, and the Mongols: that history almost always repeats itself. And it is almost always written by men.

but there were no faerie godmothers. There were only mothers and grandmothers, and there was no magic wand to wave over a person's heart and make it all better. The fairy tales lied. ...Fucking Brothers Grimm.

I was very lucky, my parents were very encouraging, and both my grandmothers. They had exquisite taste.

It was always the best way of finding out information; just go and ask a woman who keeps her eyes and ears open and who likes to talk. It always worked. It was no use asking men; they simply were not interested enough in other people and the ordinary doings of people. That is why the real historians of Africa had always been the grandmothers, who remembered the lineage and the stories that went with it.

Supposedly, guys think about sex every eight seconds. If that's true, how can they talk to their grandmothers?

We all draw inspiration from women whose names make the headlines and whose stories are in the history books, but often our greatest inspiration comes from our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, teachers, and friends.

Paula Gunn Allen, in her book Grandmothers of the Light, writes of the changing roles of women as they spiral through the phases of life, like the changing face of the moon.

Grandmothers are just antique little girls.

Prosperity depends on ferocity. The only thing that keeps your precious grandmothers in their tea and cookies are the fists at the end of your arms.

Prosperity depends on ferocity. The only things that keep your precious grandmothers in their tea and cookies are the fists at the end of your arms.

Appalachia, in fact, is a very matriarchal culture. We revere our grandmothers and mothers.

I went to NYU Tisch for undergrad, and it was amazing. My life then was extremely experimental with acting. I did crazy theater where we would be rolling around on the floor. I would be playing grandmothers, and clowns, and all this crazy stuff. Then I would be doing Shakespeare eight hours a day.

I am indebted to [my grandmothers] always for cradling me in the heart of Christ and encouraging my passion to press towards the mark of the high calling on my life, wherever that takes me.

To cause pain was a disease. As a child I imagined tiny, almost invisible animals that arrived in the neighborhood at night, they came from the ponds, from the abandoned train cars beyond the embankment, from the stinking grasses called fetienti, from the frogs, the salamanders, the flies, the rocks, the dust, and entered the water and the food and the air, making our mothers, our grandmothers as angry as starving dogs.

A lot of people in the African-American community are raised by grandmothers, and that relationship is a special bond and circle.

One can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past--they say their deities are the masters of all universes, and yet they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become better for it.