Grandmothers Quotes

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the heck she is.”
― Ellen DeGeneres

“When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.

And so, laughing and crying, we said good-bye to my grandmother. And when we said goodbye to one grandmother, we said good-bye to all of them.

Each funeral was a funeral for all of us.

We lived and died together.

All of us laughed when they lowered my grandmother into the ground.

And all of us laughed when they covered her with dirt.

And all of us laughed as we walked and drove and rode our way back to our lonely, lonely houses.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild's ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details. Even when you are wrong. Especially then, in fact. A grandmother is both a sword and a shield.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“I still loved Granny. It flowed out of my chest. With Granny gone, where would my love go?”
― Jessica Maria Tuccelli, Glow

“I thought grandmothers had to like you. It’s a law or something.”
― Mary E. Pearson, The Adoration of Jenna Fox

“And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Saying you're through with romance is like saying you're done with living, Betty. Life is better with a little romance, you know.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Elsewhere

“if god had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn't have given us grandmothers.”
― Linda Henley

“We believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“Some moments can only be cured with a big squishy grandma hug.”
― Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One

“Granny always said finding justice was as tough as putting socks on a rooster.”
― Jessica Maria Tuccelli, Glow

“One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because the goyim were jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even including the wine) tells the children that it's one of those things that happens to every Jewish generation. After the Shoah or Endlösung or Holocaust, many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a punishment for 'exile,' or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had been the raw material for the 'proof,' so for a time the professional interpreters of god's will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate.

I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance, masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein's 'offer' of her life to expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Ah, Momma. I had never looked at death before, peered into its yawning chasm for the face of a beloved. For days my mind staggered out of balance. I reeled on a precipice of knowledge that even if I were rich enough to travel all over the world, I would never find Momma. If I were as good as God’s angels and as pure as the Mother of Christ, I could never have Momma’s rough slow hands pat my cheek or braid my hair.

Death to the young is more than that undiscovered country; despite its inevitability, it is a place having reality only in song or in other people's grief.”
― Maya Angelou, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

“Remind me why I decided to bring you with me?"
"Because your grandmother told you to," said Shen.”
― Catherine Doyle, Twin Crowns

“The granny roles will be easy for her because old people just get to say whatever everyone else is thinking. Like children and fools, grandmothers are not held to the same standards as the rest of society. They are given permission to wear their true feelings externally.”
― Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

“On holidays, I cave in to the memory of love, and associate desserts and eating with the love I experienced at my grandmother's table. She was a great cook, and sweets crowded the side console cabinet during Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I have no answer as to how to overcome this. I will try until I die, every day. Just keep trying to be well. Enough said.”
― André Leon Talley, The Chiffon Trenches

“A cold wind rose, biting through my jacket, and I shivered. Big Ma looked down at me for the first time. “You cold?”
“N-no, ma’am,” I stuttered, not ready to leave the forest.
“Don’t you be lyin’ to me girl!” she snapped, putting out her hand. “It’s time we was goin’ back to the house anyways. Your mama’ll be home soon.”
I took her hand, and together we left the Caroline.”
― Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

“The lives of even quite recent generations might almost disappear from our understanding if we did not think of their aspirations.”
― Laura Cumming, Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child

“[S]he made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day, and her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.”
― Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Match Girl

“The light between them outshines the November day. My heartstrings tug, and I want to call my mother and my grandmother, the women who built me - who implanted the idea that whatever path I chose for myself, I could conquer it.

What a gift that was. What a gift that still is.”
― Lisa Wingate, Shelterwood

“Well, whatever he calls it," said Marlon's granny, "he looks like an idiot with that stupid great thing stuck in his mouth all the time.”
― Jill Murphy, The Last Noo-Noo

“I haven't seen that apron on anyone in so long; even Gran herself was too ill to use it in her final months. And to see it become three-dimensional, to see a body give it shape again... I don't know why, but it makes me look away.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“Grandmother had passed three summers ago after a stroke in her garden, and now that she was gone, Danielle had a thousand and one questions for her. The lost questions hurt the most.”
― Tananarive Due, Ghost Summer

“Thank the Lord for the prayers and provision of grandmas! I’m not sure what would have happened to Stephen and me without those two sweet saints being the constants in our lives.”
― Bart Millard, I Can Only Imagine: A Memoir

“I got into an argument in class with Danny McClaren.”
“You’re in class to learn from the teacher,” Big Ma said. “Not to be arguing with some know-nothing boy.”
I heard myself while I retold the whole thing. It sounded silly.
Big Ma never looked up once from her sewing.
...
“My teacher might call.” Might as well let the other shoe drop.
“Let him call. I’ll straighten him out.”
Big Ma was funny, as in hard to figure out.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, P.S. Be Eleven

“Big Ma was funny, as in hard to figure out. She had loved President John F. Kennedy but hadn’t wanted a Catholic president. She loved keeping up with the Kennedys in the supermarket gossip papers but also loved wagging her finger at them.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, P.S. Be Eleven

“Well, Big Ma had gone down to Friendship Baptist Church to hear Senator Kennedy tell the black people they were American citizens who deserved decent homes, decent education for their children, safe neighborhoods, and opportunities. But Big Ma talked more about taking off her glove to shake a Kennedy’s hand than she talked about his speech. You’d have thought Big Ma would’ve been baking cookies for the “Vote for Bobby” office on Fulton Street, the way she talked and talked about Senator Kennedy. But she said she wouldn’t vote for him because his hair was too long and he let people call him Bobby and not Robert. He was too young, talking about changing things in Bedford-Stuyvesant and in every other ghetto. She said that while that sounded good, and the people hollered and clapped for him, he was still a rich, young Catholic boy whose daddy made millions selling liquor.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, P.S. Be Eleven

“Big Ma never made quick-fast-in-a-hurry food. She made food that needed washing before it touched a knife, pot, or pan. Or she made beans that soaked overnight and simmered with neck bones for a good part of the next day. And stewed meat in heavy enamel pots, with bay leaves and carrots and potatoes that soaked up gravy. Big Ma cooked food meant to stick to your insides and keep your belly full. She cooked food that took time.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, P.S. Be Eleven

“The few times when Big Ma was sick, Uncle Darnell brought in a pizza pie. Big Ma never liked that and always got well the next day so we wouldn’t get used to take-out food.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, P.S. Be Eleven

“A whipping didn’t come without what Big Ma calls “a wisdom.” According to Big Ma, a whipping and a wisdom went together. The wisdom is what you’re supposed to remember long after the sting of the whipping became a memory.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, P.S. Be Eleven