Jessamine Chan > Quotes

“A mother is always patient. A mother is always kind. A mother is always giving. A mother never falls apart. A mother is the buffer between her child and the cruel world.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“Loneliness is a form of narcissism. A mother who is in harmony with her child, who understands her place in her child's life and her role in society, is never lonely. Through caring for her child, all her needs are fulfilled.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“A mother is a shark. You're always moving. Always learning. Always trying to better yourself.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“That they’re dangerous women. Women who can’t control themselves. Who don’t know the right way to love.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“A mother is always giving. A mother never falls apart. A mother is a buffer between her child and the cruel world.
Absorb it, the instructors say. Take it. Take it.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“By staying calm, they’re showing their child that a mother can handle anything. A mother is always patient. A mother is always kind. A mother is always giving. A mother never falls apart. A mother is the buffer between her child and the cruel world.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“Gust used to explain the whole world that way: the mind as a house living in the house of the body, living in the house of a house, living in the larger house of the town, in the larger house of the state, in the houses of America and society and the universe. He said these houses fit inside one another like the Russian nesting dolls they bought for Harriet.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“She once heard Ms. Khoury say “babysitter” in the same tone as some people say “socialist.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“Will’s broken birds always emitted their own light, big-eyed and bony. At dinner parties, she wanted to touch their throats and play with their long, tangled hair, wondered what it was like to wear sadness so close to the skin and be loved for it.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“Every night, Frida kneels in the dark nursery, thinking about the child who was cut out of her body, who should be beside her but who hasn’t been beside her, not really, for eight weeks. Nine weeks. Ten. It is November, and Harriet is twenty months old.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“She never thought of herself as living in a city full of children, but maybe every city and every neighborhood is full of children when you’ve lost your own.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“The girl she can become if her mother is living, the girl she’ll never be if her mother takes her own life.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“We have your daughter.”

But I have learned to be good.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light is your child.” They’ll train with a cohort of mothers based on their child’s gender and age. It wouldn’t do to have mothers of teenagers training with mothers of infants. Class sizes will be kept small, for the time being. Each mother will be assigned to a cohort based on the age of her youngest child. Mothers of girls and mothers of boys will train in different buildings. “Girls and boys have such different needs,” Ms. Knight says. Mothers of both will report for extra training three evenings a week and every other weekend. Mothers who have multiple children, as well as addiction issues, will be extremely busy.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“Fix the home and fix society.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“In this light, no one would be able to tell that they’re losing hope. That they’re dangerous women. Women who can’t control themselves. Who don’t know the right way to love. 13.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“She hopes the family court judge has feelings, that the judge, if he or she is childless, at least has a cat or dog, something with a soul and a face, that he or she has experience unconditional love, knows regret.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“Maybe people should have to work up to children, from plants to pets to babies. Maybe they should all be given a five-year-old, then four, then three, then two, then one, and if the child is still alive at year's end, then they can have a baby. Why did they have to begin with a baby?”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“Some say the school wants to keep them distracted so more mothers will fail. Maybe someone is making money off their failures.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“The mothers must narrate everything, impart wisdom, give their undivided attention, maintain eye contact at all times. When the dolls ask why, why, why, as toddlers are wont to do, the mothers must provide answers. Curiosity must be rewarded. “The dolls have an off switch,” Ms. Khoury says. “You do not.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“The mothers should know the correct sequence of embraces, kisses, and kind words to nurse their doll back to health. The love that awakens the spirit and heals an aching body.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“They’re angriest about the phone privileges. The rumors that the fathers’ evaluations are easier. The rumors that the technical department handles all changes of blue liquid.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“By staying calm, they’re showing their child that a mother can handle anything. A mother is always patient. A mother is always kind. A mother is always giving. A mother never falls apart. A mother is the buffer between her child and the cruel world. Absorb it, the instructors say. Take it. Take it.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“Loneliness is a form of narcissism. A mother who is in harmony with her child, who understands her place in her child’s life and her role in society, is never lonely. Through caring for her child, all her needs are fulfilled.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“Lots of people are all cold and heartless. Who do you think works in a prison? Who do you think works on death row? It's a job.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“her expressions suggested feelings of resentment and anger, a stunning lack of remorse, a tendency toward self-pity.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“Maybe that hurt was less dangerous, maybe it wouldn’t result in a child being killed, but when it happened in her childhood, she wanted to disappear. Sometimes she wanted to die. She hated the sight of her own face in the mirror.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“dumped or fired. No one would guess her crime. She looks too fancy. Too proper. Too Asian.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“A mother shouldn’t have to ask questions. She should intuit.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

“His anger makes her nervous. This might be how she looks when she talks about Susanna. One minute reasonable, the next blinded by fury.”
― Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers