The Girls Who Grew Big Quotes

“Here’s the thing about killer whales: contrary to popular belief, they won’t kill you and they’re not even whales. That’s what happens to someone when the world decides something about you, grabs hold and morphs you into an illusion of yourself: suddenly even your name isn’t your own.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“You remember how much safer it is to not want nothing at all.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“And you can make yourself look any way you want to, but if you think it’s gonna get the hurt inside you to disappear, you sure wrong. So if you’re asking me if I think you’d be prettier if you was skinny as a reed, you’re askin’ the wrong person. I don’t much care if you’re skinny or pretty, and don’t you start thinking they’re the same thing, but I sure as hell am always gonna think you prettiest when you’re breathing, when you’re fed and housed and happy.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“If you’re not your mother’s only child, you know there’s not nobody in the world that can understand the dirt you fought to grow from like your brother.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“A pool made you feel invincible, but an ocean did the opposite. It reminded you what a fragile thing you were, how every cell that made you up was nothing in comparison to the waves that could take you down as quickly as a bullet shot through your softest skin.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“But that was not how you loved a child. That was how you let a child love you.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“I've made mistakes. You don't have to tell me, I already know. But here's the thing: there's not no parent that hasn't stung with the same hand they used to stroke their baby's head with. The difference between a mother who's forgivable and a mother who's not is whether she gives enough of a shit to try to redeem herself in the first place. Apologize and do different. And I would've given anything to be better for them.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big: A Novel

“You can add new sand on top of the old sand and you can sew all kinds of new clothes for a child that don’t exist yet and you can find some boy who wants to give you a life that sounds a little more acceptable, but none of that makes the old sand go away.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“Motherhood made you believe blindly, hope endlessly, behave irrationally, as long as it meant those children tucked safely in the pocket of your love.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“And you can make yourself look any way you want to, but if you think it’s gonna get the hurt inside you to disappear, you sure wrong.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“And if you think I don’t make sense with all of them just ’cause I’m white, you wouldn’t believe what happens when a girl these days gets knocked up. Suddenly, it’s the most important thing about you. Suddenly, you don’t have green eyes or a two-bedroom shack on Willow Street or straight A’s in Biology. You are nothing but a young mother.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“Said this wasn’t no town where you could just be out here mixing with the wrong kind of people. The wrong kind of people. Funny, I thought. It was the only time in my life I’d ever heard Pawpaw talk about us like we were the right kind of people.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“We rotate, ripple, revolve, so you can’t know one of us without knowing all of us, love one of us without loving the metal scrape of the truck we found, gave, claimed life inside.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“He apologized, and I was fragile enough to not care whether he meant it.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“It’s funny, making the same mistake twice.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“I knew what it was to be our parents’ child.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“But maybe all the things I loved most about my momma were easiest to remember when all I wanted to do was to hug her, when the dream of an intact family was more enchanting than the truth of it all. And I wanted the lie. I wanted the easy story without its cold end.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“Don't we all deserve to have a second chance at choosing the thing that'll choose us back.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“Sometimes a dream isn’t worth the life you lose on the journey there.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“The best way to fail is not to try.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“You are only what you believe yourself to be.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“You are only what you believe yourself to be. When you are ashamed”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“you can take a good look at yourself and be honest about who you are and what you’re willing to give for what you want.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“Motherhood made you believe blindly”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“Like a penguin on a bed of ice floating toward the equator”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“I wouldn’t change a thing. Because I was this child’s mother”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“Unrequited love is like believing in fairies for a little too long”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“As though all singularly possessed, we each looked down at our babies' faces, dimpling and delicate and so new, and thought, I wouldn't change a thing. Because I was this child's mother, and all of me — sun and moon, sea and sky, body and bone — would forever stand in the wild truth that I could be mother and child and freed, all at once.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“I loved those kids like I was born for it, and I would give up all the purest air in the world just for a chance at getting to hold their small, dimpled hands every day.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big

“As though all singularly possessed, we each looked down at our babies' faces, dimpling and delicate and so new, and thought, I wouldn't change a thing . Because I was this child's mother, and all of me - sun and moon, sea and sky, body and bone - would forever stand in the wild truth that I could be mother and child and freed, all at once.”
― Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big