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.

Theodore Roethke

• Mother
• Easy
• Boys
• Kitchen
• Whiskey
• Shirts
• Hung

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Quotes to Explore

• 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.

  

  Caleb Landry Jones
  • Life
  • Good
  • Great

• Education is the mother of leadership.

  

  Wendell Willkie
  • Mother
  • Education
  • Leadership

• Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.

  

  Camille Paglia
  • Up
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• On a personal level, there are many people who have meant a great deal to me. My father and mother were certainly of vital importance, not only in themselves but because they created a world for me to revolt against.

  

  Ingmar Bergman
  • People
  • World
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• It's not so easy to forgive.

  

  Carice van Houten
  • Easy
  • Forgive

• 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.

  

  Salma Hayek
  • Great
  • Women
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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.

  

  Dan Webster
  • House
  • Leadership
  • Easy

• 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.

  

  Faye Wattleton
  • Mother
  • Religious
  • Expectation

• I believe the question now is: who murdered my mother?

  

  Sam Sheppard
  • Believe
  • Mother
  • Question

• My father and my mother separated when I was two.

  

  Carla Gugino
  • Mother
  • Father
  • Two

• 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.

  

  Iman
  • Mother
  • Father
  • Independence

• 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.

  

  Gary Vaynerchuk
  • Up
  • Mother
  • House

• 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.

  

  Nancy Willard
  • World
  • Mother
  • Grace

• 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.

  

  Maceo Parker
  • Soul
  • Blessed
  • Easy

• 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.

  

  A. S. Byatt
  • Think
  • You
  • Easy

• My mother is the coolest, most amazing person I know.

  

  J. J. Abrams
  • Mother
  • Know
  • Amazing

• 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.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • People
  • Different
  • Remember

• One of my favorite memories from growing up in Brazil is being in the kitchen with my family and watching everyone bake and cook.

  

  Camila Alves
  • Up
  • Family
  • Growing

• 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.

  

  G. Gordon Liddy
  • World
  • Mother
  • Possible

• Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.

  

  Irwin Shaw
  • Going
  • Everybody
  • Surprises

• If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves.

  

  Don Marquis
  • Writing
  • Reading

• I would like to work with The Weeknd. That's my boy, though; that's my friend.

  

  Daystar Peterson
  • Work
  • Friend
  • Boy

• Cuba came to be the last country to get rid of Spanish colonialism and the first to shake off the heinous imperialist tutelage.

  

  Fidel Castro
  • Country
  • Spanish
  • Last

• 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.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Mother
  • Easy
  • Boys