Theodore Roethke Quotes
My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.
Quotes to Explore
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Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents' passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It's no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano.
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Education is the mother of leadership.
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Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.
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It's not so easy to forgive.
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I realize now that I've hoped to be great - as an actress, as a mother - because I want to embody the greatness of women who didn't get to be all they could have been. Their dignity, their courage, and their brilliance make me strive to be better. They're a part of me.
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As a former minority leader who became the first Republican Speaker of the House in Florida since Reconstruction, I know that leadership is not an easy task.
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My mother taught me a lot of things, but they had big presuppositions built in – like her expectation that I'd be a missionary nurse in a religious order.
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I believe the question now is: who murdered my mother?
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My mother was an activist; so was my father. They came from a generation of young Somalis who were actively involved in getting independence for Somalia in 1960.
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If there's a problem, we at Wine Library never tell ourselves that once we handle this issue, we'll never have to deal with the person again. We talk to every single person as though we're going to wind up sitting next to that person at his or her mother's house that night for dinner.
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In Jenny Offill's remarkable first novel, 'Last Things,' 7-year-old Grace Davitt watches her mother, Anna, descend into madness and tries to make sense of the claustrophobic world that Anna has created for her.
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You have to love what you do. And in order to do that, you have to search your soul to find out what it is that you really are about. And then when you find it, if you're lucky enough to be in a position to do what it is that you love, it becomes easy. I'm blessed that I ended up doing exactly what I wanted to do.
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I don't think it is an easy thing to write and expect to be commercial, even if you are from Venus and a hermaphrodite.
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My mother is the coolest, most amazing person I know.
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I remember, as a kid, going into other people's houses. Everything was different. The smells in the kitchen were different; the clothing was different. That bothered me. There's something very mysterious about other families and the way they function.
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One of my favorite memories from growing up in Brazil is being in the kitchen with my family and watching everyone bake and cook.
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I was afraid of just about everything in this world, with the possible exception of my mother and I wasn't too sure about her.
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I'd grown up with a lot of women. My mother was a famous lesbian in the '20s and '30s, and I grew up with only women, so I was used to getting on with them.
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I never wanted to take the easy way, and I was always willing to hustle.
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I would never have gone anywhere if it hadn't been for Mother's faith and support.
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I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream.
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My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.
