When My Mother Died Quotes

#1. When my mother died, I had to go on air that night and do jokes.

Graham Kennedy

#2. How immense must be the force of life which turns a baby , who can just distinguish a great blot of blue and purple on a black background, into the child who thirteen years later can feel all that I felt on May 5th 1895 - now almost exactly to a day, forty-four years ago - when my mother died.

Virginia Woolf

#3. When my mother died, it sort of put a damper on things. My career didn't have the same significance or excitement. It had always been about doing well for my family - my brothers, sisters, father, mother. Then something interesting and important happened - I started doing things for me.

John Travolta

#4. When my mother died and left me all alone, I began to realize that some things, like being loved, were more important than one's image, money, and accomplishments.

J. Matthew Nespoli

#5. But when my mother died, I found that I did not believe that she was gone.

Meghan O'Rourke

#6. When my mother died, I thought I'd drown in sorrow. But my grandmother said something very wise, and I've always held it close to my heart. She said that not even the sea is infinite, and neither is grief.

T. Frohock

#7. My mother was gentle and warm. She was the sort of person you could really open up to. I was the eldest and her only boy, so I guess I was treated differently. She did bring me up as a Catholic, and at one time I was an altar boy, but I lost my faith, as did my father, when my mother died at 45.

Stephen Mangan

#8. When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep. So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

William Blake

#9. I think when my mother died, it was such a - you know, a shock to the logic that I had been raised with.

Jim Gaffigan

#10. For example, when my mother died, the people who showed up just to put an apron on to cook, people who really do the right thing, so to speak, as my momma would always say to show that they care, a sense of community that we've lost so much in our country.

Sela Ward

#11. I did feel when my mother died if anyone was going to haunt me it would be her. And she hasn't, so I think it is possibly the end.

Kate Atkinson

#12. When my mother died, and when my father died, it's big. Our parents are giants; they're titans of our lives, so of course it's going to be a big deal.

Loudon Wainwright III

#13. Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother.

Anne Lamott

#14. When my mother died, my father's early widowhood gave him social cachet he would not have had if they had divorced. He was a bigger catch for the sorrow attached.

Amy Hempel

#15. I was kind of a misfit, and when my mother died, I had to become an adult, something that I never thought I would ever be.

Martha Wainwright

#16. The two saddest moments of my life were when my mother died and when I was told I couldn't play football for the Colts anymore.

Art Donovan

#17. When my mother died, I fell apart. My father wanted to control me. As a consequence, I ran away to America.

Louise Bourgeois

#18. I grew up in a second when my mother died," he told Sunil. "My father and brother didn't understand me.

Katherine Boo

#19. I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long. She edited out, maybe burned, every single photograph where I'm naked.

Marina Abramovic

#20. My own mother died when I was 10 years old. My folks have told me that what little humor I have comes from her. I can't remember her humor, but I can remember her love and understanding of me.

Will Rogers

#21. My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, "All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: 'On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.'" She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasn't easy.

Pat Conroy

#22. Well, my mother, I knew until I was 13. She died when I was 13.

Harry Connick Jr.

#23. I held my father's hand while he died of cancer, and it's really painful when you do something like that up close and personal. My mother was already gone, and I was very, very close to my father.

Elizabeth Warren

#24. I guess the most seminal moment going early way back was my father died when I was 3 years old. I was raised by my grandparents, and my mother went back and got a degree.

Ram Shriram

#25. When I was a child I had a best friend who lived across the road from me. When her mother died unexpectedly it was like losing a member of my own family. I think I am still affected by the memory of that loss.

Margaret Mahy

#26. I guess I can be surprised I'm alive. I'm taking a little better care of myself than when I was a young person. My father died when he was 63. My mother made it to 74. My grandparents, God, they were dropping like flies.

Loudon Wainwright III

#27. I grew up in a very open-minded family. My father died when I was very little, so my mother was really, really incredibly busy trying to provide for us.

Sonia Braga

#28. My mother did play classical piano, not that well. And actually, my father sang with the big bands - he sang with Bob Crosby's band - but he had to give up show business when his father died. He had to come back to Montgomery and take over the furniture store.

Toni Tennille

#29. I'm destiny's child. I wasn't meant to be born: my mother bled for four months when she was pregnant, and then she fell down the stairs in her eighth month of pregnancy. She nearly died; I believe I came into this world for a reason.

Shilpa Shetty

#30. My father's life was so decimated by his earliest experiences. His mother died when he was 7 years old, which he always said was the worst experience in his life. When he was 8, his father disappeared and he was on his own from the age of 8.

Walter Mosley

#31. My mother died when I was 17, and I moved in with my dad to make a 12-month pig's ear of retaking my A-levels.

Robert Webb

#32. My father died when I was young, and after he did, my mother had it tough. Very tough.

Cate Blanchett

#33. My mother was real and her son was real. When he died she buried him. Now she is dead. Mother Courage and her children, my mother and her son. They are all stories now.

Patti Smith

#34. When I was 20, my mother died and I went off the rails a little bit. I kinda had my slightly dark period.

James McCartney

#35. My father was unwell when I was 11, had a stroke at 14 and died when I was 18. My mother going to work at seven in the morning and coming back to look after him and me and my brother left its mark on me.

John Caudwell

#36. My grandmother died when my mother was just 11 years old, and consequently, my mother never learned how to cook particularly well.

Jami Attenberg

#37. One of the few times I saw my mother cry was when Lennon died, and the other time was when Elvis died.

Sam Taylor-Wood

#38. I came to Harlem from West Virginia when I was three, after my mother died. My father, who was very poor, gave me up to two wonderful people, my foster parents.

Walter Dean Myers

#39. I met Gemma, my wife, when she was 12. She had a schoolgirl crush on me and her dad had arranged for her to meet me. Later, she started coming to my concerts, but I only got to know her well after her mother died. I rang to see how she was, and that's how it started.

Gary Numan

#40. When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover.

Joyce Carol Oates

#41. I remember when I was 26. My father died when I was young and my mother didn't have a lot of money, so I thought, 'I want to own a flat by the time I'm 26.' So I worked towards that, literally trying to scrimp and save. But sometimes those plans don't go as you expect.

Cate Blanchett

#42. When I was 14, my mother died. My father, who had always had ulcers, came apart. He had a series of intestinal operations, and was in the hospital for nearly a year. So the four of us teenagers lived by ourselves in the apartment without a guardian.

Bonnie Bedelia

#43. My mother died when I was young, and I was filming all the time. I was all over the place. Acting was the one constant.

Mara Wilson

#44. If I'd seen a grown man beating a crippled boy, of course I'd intervene. If my father died and left my mother destitute, it's your instinct to take care of her. So when I started to think about it in those terms, it started to make sense to me.

Charlie Hunnam

#45. I don't remember my mother. She died when I was one year old. My distracted and callous sensibility comes from the lack of that warmth and from my useless longing after kisses I don't remember.

Fernando Pessoa

#46. When my mother passed away several years ago - well, wait a minute. Actually, she didn't 'pass away.' She died. Something about that verb, 'to pass away' always sounds to me as if someone just drifted through the wallpaper. No, my mother did not pass away. She definitely died.

Steve Allen

#47. My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess - she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived, I probably wouldn't be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.

B.B. King

#48. My father died when I was young, and my mother, Ruth, went to work in an office selling theater and movie parties. She put me through private school, Horace Mann, in Riverdale. She sent me to camp so that I would learn to compete. She was a lioness, and I was her cub.

Alan Furst

#49. When my father died in Greece, leaving my mother strapped, a cheque arrived next day from my Greek publishers who'd just bought two of my books for pounds 500.

Emma Tennant

#50. You see, my mother was a district nurse until she died when I was 14, and we used to move from time to time because of her work.

Paul McCartney

#51. The world lost something when you died, Tod, and I know that wasn't easy for your family. But the world's loss was Kaylee's gain. I hope the two of you have the forever her mother and I never got."
"I will do my damnedest to make sure of that."
"I know you will.

Rachel Vincent

#52. I grew up in a house full of faith, and my mother died when I was a little girl, and I found comfort in my faith.

Roma Downey

#53. I feel you. Inside. In the parts of me I crushed the night my mother died. No matter how I tried to keep you out, you got in and I couldn't let you leave me behind. So listen to me when I say this. My life is yours. You're the reason I'll stay alive. The only goddamn reason.

Dee Tenorio

#54. My mum died when I was 14. That is a kind of strange age to lose a mother. John lost his mum when he was 17.

Paul McCartney

#55. I had one request when I started doing the plays. My prayer was: God let me do well enough to be able to take care of my mother. I was able to do that 'til the day she died because of my audience. So, they've already done enough. All I ask for now is their continued support.

Tyler Perry

#56. [On her mother, who died when Hutton was 4:] I hardly remember her, but I have missed her all my life.

Barbara Hutton

#57. I had a very distant relationship with my father. It was always just me and my mother. It was a shattering blow when she died. I was 16.

Joan Lingard

#58. My mother was a talker, but there are still so many things I want to ask her. She died when I was forty. But she did teach me to be a talker with my own children.

Susan Shreve

#59. When my daughter Paula died, I was in the deepest pain, and my mother said, "This kind of sorrow is like a long, narrow, dark channel. You have to walk this channel alone and be sure that there is light at the other ending. Just keep walking."

Isabel Allende

#60. My mother Molly had a nervous breakdown after my father Chic died, aged 50. He was a very generous man who ran a shop in Dundee giving a lot of people tick. When he died, a lot of people hadn't paid their bills, so he died with a lot of debt. After he died, my mother went doolally.

Brian Cox

#61. My mother died when I was five, and all I did was sit and cry. I cried and cried and cried all day, until the neighbors went away.

Madonna Ciccone

#62. As I sat there in the pew during the altar call, I suddenly understood that if I didn't surrender to Him I would go to Hell when I died. It wasn't Hell itself that scared me - or not just Hell. It was the idea that my mother was going to Heaven without me.

Daryl Gregory

#63. My childhood was kind of complicated. I have an older sister, but my father, my mother's husband, died when I was four years old. So I only had my mum and sister, really.

Orlando Bloom

#64. From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell

#65. When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.

Harriet Ann Jacobs

#66. When I decided to become a doctor, I was very, very young, when my mother, her seventh child, became pregnant, and she was feeling terrible pain, and I could not know how to help her. And my mother died in front of my eyes, without knowing why, which diagnosis. So I decided to be a doctor.

Hawa Abdi

#67. I spent my whole life helping my mother carry around her psychic trunks like a bitter bellhop. So a great load was lifted when she died, and my life was much easier.

Anne Lamott

#68. My grandfather died when I was 12, but I remember the sorrow of my mother. Even now, she's an old lady, but when she speaks about her father, she looks young. A love like that is undefeated, you know?

Claire Denis

#69. My mother died when I was 12, and right after, my dad died in a car crash. I was 15 and had no family. The court sent me to live with my uncle and aunt in Missouri.

Karolyn Grimes

#70. Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.

Anne Rice

#71. My mother had me when she was 15. My father died before I was born. So my mother was a teenage widow, and she used herself as her greatest example so I wouldn't end up in her position.

Gabriel Luna

#72. My mother desperately wanted children. She had a child that was stillborn - something I learned when I was looking through her 'effects' after she had died. It was then that I discovered my original birth certificate, which indicated the previous birth.

Stanley Hauerwas

#73. I'm starting to get older, and began to think about mortality a little more. My mother died in 2003 and that was a big shock. When your parents start to die off, that's going to be a revelation. So for me, this album - although it might sound quite cheery - is really talking about death.

Donald Fagen

#74. After my father died when I was seven and my mother entered into an abusive relationship, I shuffled between houses - staying with friends, families from church, and relying on the kindness of teachers and people throughout my community to help me grow up essentially without parents.

Ronnie Musgrove

#75. I had a sister who died and my mother passed away. I know that grief comes in waves. When deep grief hits, I know that it hurts like hell, and then you get a little bit of a respite, and then it comes back, and it hurts like hell. I know it can be survived.

Emily Saliers

#76. My mother's cross was given to me when she died. I like to have it always close to me.

Christian Louboutin

#77. My father came by himself across the North Korean border when he was seventeen. And hasn't seen his brothers or sisters or parents since then. And he died some time ago, but never saw any of his relatives. My mother was a refugee in war-torn Korea.

Jim Yong Kim

#78. My father died when I was seven, leaving a widow and five sons, ranging in age from five to seventeen. My mother was the most highly-disciplined and hardest working person I have ever known, and this, combined with her love and gentleness, enabled her to make a success of each of her children.

Arthur Lewis

#79. When my father died, my mother was still alive. And I think when your second parent dies, there is that shock: 'Oh man, I'm an orphan.' There's also this relief: It's done; it's finished; it's over.

Roz Chast

#80. After my father died, I learned that when tragedy strikes, you can either open up or shut down. My mother opened up and was not herself for some time. I shut down, and it worked for me. I shut down again on the day of September the eleventh.

H M Naqvi

#81. Never having been in love, this is going to be a real trick. I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my mother's face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died.

Suzanne Collins

#82. I, of course, owe everything to my mother, because my father died when I was only nine days of age; and the marvelous teachings, the faith, the integrity of my mother have been an inspiration to me.

Heber J. Grant

#83. I've certainly faced some raw, real pain in my life. I lost my father to a car accident when I was young. My mother died ten years ago. My son was very sick as an infant. Eventually, I have attempted to transform this pain into art, to make meaning out of it.

Dani Shapiro