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1 " But more often there are regular people in the pool. Beautiful women seniors doing water aerobics - mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers - their massive breasts and guts reminding you how it is that women carry worlds. When I swim by them I watch their legs and bodies underwater, and feel a strange kinship with a maternal lineage. "
― Lidia Yuknavitch , The Chronology of Water
2 " And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read. "
― Alice Walker
3 " If you can bring yourself to apply your imagination to finding the possible favorable outcomes of undesired developments, even if only as an exercise, you'll see that it fosters creativity. This suggestion is much more than a way to find the silver lining our grandmothers encouraged us to look for. I include it in this book because creativity is linked to intuition, and intuition is the way out of the most serious challenges you might face. Albert Einstein said that when you follow intuition, The solutions come to you, and you don’t know how or why. "
― Gavin de Becker
4 " Don't get me wrong. It's a lovely idea. It's very romantic. 'Just believe' and you can experience magic. It's why grandmothers the world over knit the word Believe into blankets for their grandchildren." His elbows resting on the arms of his chair, Mister Fox waved his hands in a vague, circular gesture. " There's just one little problem. It's completely wrong. It's backward. When you believe in something, you stop questioning it. You stop looking for answers and ignore other possibilities. Only minds that are truly open to possibility can see magic. It's people who aren't sure - of themselves, of the world, of their place in the world - who can see and experience magic. "
5 " I keep thinking about the fragmented quality of human awareness: You take your blindness for granted most of the time then suddenly it stuns you: how little you see as you plunge ahead from minute to minute, day to day, year to year - vision cut down to the arc of a flickering flashlight, never sure how your words and acts are affecting someone else because you never really see that someone as he is. I know we should find even the most serene life unendurable were we to possess to any real degree those extrasensory perceptions which our grandmothers believed in... "
6 " I have the idea that we grandmothers are meant to play the part of protective witches; we must watch over younger women, children, community, and also, why not?, this mistreated planet, the victim of such unrelenting desecration. I would like to fly on a broomstick and dance in the moonlight with other pagan witches in the forest, invoking earth forces and howling demons; I want to become a wise old crone, to learn ancient spells and healers' secrets. It is no small thing, this design of mine. Witches, like saints, are solitary stars that shine with a light of their own; they depend on nothing and no one, which is why they have no fear and can plunge blindly into the abyss with the assurance that instead of crashing to earth, they will fly back out. They can change into birds and see the world from above, or worms to see it from within, they can inhabit other dimensions and travel to other galaxies, they are navigators on an infinite ocean of consciousness and cognition. "
― Isabel Allende , Paula
7 " To cause pain was a disease. As a child I imagined tiny, almost invisible animals that arrived in the neighborhood at night, they came from the ponds, from the abandoned train cars beyond the embankment, from the stinking grasses called fetienti, from the frogs, the salamanders, the flies, the rocks, the dust, and entered the water and the food and the air, making our mothers, our grandmothers as angry as starving dogs. "
― Elena Ferrante , My Brilliant Friend (The Neapolitan Novels #1)
8 " As grandmothers used to say, 'Better to pay the grocer than the doctor "
― Michael Pollan , Food Rules: An Eater's Manual
9 " The Wishing BonesA thousand grandmothers ago Pyrrha and Deucalion repopulated the world with rocks, bones of mother Earth, a generation of my ancestors strained from the mud of a drowned planet.But I’m more interested in my earliest grandmothers, their gills and wetness,before they crawled from that blue expanseand learned to carry the sea within them,in their cells, between their cells, in their eyes.The buoyancy of ocean has never left us.It hides in skin’s complex reservoir where we're selectively permeable and our bodies exchange the smallest life.If we had no need to distinguish ourselves from others we’d be missing the skin that defines lovers and enemies and opens itself to both. "
― Jalina Mhyana , Spikeseed
10 " This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven. "
― Rick Bragg
11 " I thought grandmothers had to like you. It’s a law or something. "
― Mary E. Pearson , The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Jenna Fox Chronicles, #1)
12 " There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around. "
13 " Grandmam came back from that distance in time that separates grandmothers from their grandchildren and made herself a mother to me. "
― Wendell Berry , Hannah Coulter
14 " Granny Trill and Granny Wallon were traditional ancients of a kind we won’t see today, the last of that dignity of grandmothers to whom age was its own embellishment. The grandmothers of those days dressed for the part in that curious but endearing uniform which is now known to us only through music-hall. And our two old neighbours, when setting forth on errands, always prepared themselves scrupulously so. They wore high laced boots and long muslin dresses, beaded chokers and candlewick shawls, crowned by tall poke bonnets tied with trailing ribbons and smothered with inky sequins. They looked like starlings, flecked with jet, and they walked in a tinkle of darkness.Those severe and similar old bodies enthralled me when they dressed that way. When I finally became King (I used to think) I would command a parade of grandmas, and drill them, and march them up and down - rank upon rank of hobbling boots, nodding bonnets, flying shawls, and furious chewing faces. They would be gathered from all the towns and villages and brought to my palace in wagon-loads. No more than a monarch’s whim, of course, like eating cocoa or drinking jellies; but far more spectacular any day than those usual trudging guardsmen. "
― Laurie Lee , Cider with Rosie
15 " They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. "
― Douglas Adams , The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)
16 " Am I witch? I don't know. That's what they call me. They say it's because I follow the rhythms of the earth, honor the seasons, dance under the moon and seek the ancient herbal wisdom of our ancestors. " Folk Lore, poppycock, myths," they say as they sneer at the rosemary in my cup, the comfrey brewing on the stove and turmeric stains on my hands. " Western medicine and science have replaced all that nonsense," they say. They make witches out to be evil and then call me a witch because I am seeking the knowledge & ancient wisdom that the world seems hell bent on forgetting. Well, they can call me what they like, but I know I am not evil. This is what I know: I am an intuitive woman who instinctively knows that this sacred earth holds healing that western medicine will never be able to replace. I will be here holding space. I will be their witch. So, here I am- A kitchen witch sipping her Rosemary tea, mixing up her herbal potion, dancing under the moon, and fighting for the knowledge & wisdom of our grandmothers to not be forgotten. "
17 " I love Africa....... Each day each breath, she consumes me. I have never changed so much In such a short time Each day I feel more part of her. Her colour, smell, her smiles , the ever changing landscapes. Vast deserts rolling hills plaines & Mountains. Her beauty and her majesty. Like sweet wine flowing through my veins, my heart sings as I wave to all those faces going by. Back home to my Grandmothers Birth place. They said “welcome home”, those village boys. How did they know? You all said I would cry, I thought no, but yes I often do. Not for their pain but for their happiness . I cry now, together hearts will sing ,” I love Africa”. See her now as I write.. Kilimanjaro , it doesn’t get much better .Tears on a hard mans face. There is no time but now , no words just peace. Thousands of smiling faces, the mass of souls are singing out . Yes I see and feel it now.... In those trees I sense the Spirits of our saving , could it be our looking for? Sailing ships a familiar shore, now I’m crying happy and singing . Thoughts intense of please no more. I love Africa. An epiphany I can’t explain .Not like the ancient rituals , sound of rain, and men together by campfires. Beginning to end but there really is no such thing as time, just imaginings. We still love sitting by the camp fire and we love listening to the rain? I love Africa the Eden and our Birthplace , Man. How can I explain to you my friend what I have seen and felt unless you too have seen it all ... Africa. Michael Burke. "
18 " If 9 out of 10 grandmothers selected from 10 respective cultures can agree it is evil, then it's evil. Cut it out. "
― Lynda Williams
19 " Moreover, grandmothers of students who aren't doing so well in class are at even higher risk - students who are failing are fifty times more likely to lose a grandmother compared with non-failing students. In a paper exploring this sad connection, Adam speculates that the phenomenon is due to intrafamilial dynamics, which is to say, students' grandmothers care so much about their grandchildren that they worry themselves to death over the outcome of exams. "
― Dan Ariely , The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves
20 " So if you have a grandma Thank the Good Lord up above And give Grandmama hugs and kisses For grandmothers are to love. "