Lady Tremaine Quotes

“My experience of happiness is that it comes in two forms: a potent dose so extreme that you are overwhelmed with fear it will disappear, or a subtle kind that envelops you with such stealth you’re hardly aware of its presence.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“My book of maxims—life, distilled—would be short:

You do not need to be afraid. You do not have to be good. You do not need to hide your fleshy interiors behind a carapace of frills and lace. Life is not meant for measurement.

There is but one beat to heed. Live like this and you will know with certainty:

You are the scariest thing in the woods.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“No one tells you now to mother. It is presumed to be buried within you, a deep, primordial instinct that awakens in your body—in your breast —when the time is right.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“Any mother who tells you she loves all her children—or appraises them—equally is lying. There is no way to measure or balance love. Love is an animal of its own bidding and inclination; it prowls and pounces and feels; it grows and it hurts and it withers. My love for the girls was ranging and reaching. It assessed them because assessment was a part of protection. It saw their differences”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“Because our happiness was not overwhelming – because it was subtle and constant and threaded through every day and every interaction – I did not know to covet it, to hold on to it, that it might suddenly be taken away.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“think we’ve all come to see: Marriage is not a savior. Just a choice.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“No one tells you how to mother. It is presumed to be buried within you, a deep primordial instinct that awakens in your body—in your breast—when the time is right. We mothers are expected to have that instinct. Our intuition. Our supernatural understanding of our children's habits and bodies and rhythms. You learn to trust your knowledge.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“There is no way to measure or balance love. Love is an animal of its own bidding and inclination; it prowls and pounces and feels; it grows and it hurts and it withers.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“A map is made and then the land changes and the map does not change with it. And yet we respect maps as if they are the law”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“I enunciated each word with clarity. Soft voice, controlled pace, Agatha reminded me.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“And when you are gray, you will see it is nothing but a color.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“A map is made and then the land changes and the map does not change with it. And yet we respect maps as if they are the law,”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“I hesitated, not because I didn’t want to, but because I wanted to so badly, I thought the moment deserved ceremony.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“Respectability was a lifeboat that would float the girls along the gentle tides of stability, straight onto the secure banks of marriage. A leaking roof would not be a bother if they lived beneath a new one.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“Despite my mother’s best efforts, I was enthralled with the folktale as a child. It was only as an adult, and through mothering my own daughters, that I found the need to revisit a tale that, across centuries, languages, and cultures, has continued to tell young women that, if they are beautiful, nice, and follow the rules, they might be lucky enough to be “picked” by a prince.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“can no longer bear passing up an opportunity for happiness.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“the morally vague expanse that you learn to make a home within.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“But what of later, when you have a want or need of your own, something that he does not want or need, or worse, contradicts his wants or needs. What would happen then?”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“you love a bird, you should set it free and see if it will fly back to you.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“Extreme happiness is measured and held against its potential absence. Contentedness is only recognized once it’s gone.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“No one tells you how to mother. It is presumed to be buried within you, a deep, primordial instinct that awakens in your body—in your breast—when the time is right. We mothers are expected to have that instinct. Our intuition. Our supernatural understanding of our children’s habits and bodies and rhythms.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“A child believes everything you say, everything you tell them, and there is a precise moment, you feel it exactingly, a little tap in your gut, when the belief snaps.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“Walls were designed to keep danger out. A cage was built to keep a threat contained.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“the line between possibility and fantasy is proving to be exceedingly fine.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“me. I had spent so much time perfecting the little dollhouse of our existence, that I had forgotten about the dolls living in its rooms.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“And before there were lines on my face, there was joy.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“But just as shadows serve to hide and disguise, they also provide privacy and solitude, and, if you look carefully, beauty. The darkness of the woods offers a break from watchful eyes and rules to follow and stiffened skirts and the never-ending etiquette of being a woman in the world. For a few short hours of the day, I've always considered it a fair trade: darkness for freedom.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“Dreams by their definition were impermanent.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“the hope in my breast had become so alive that it was painful—more of a needful kind of want than I had ever experienced.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“We don’t all draw our angels with the same hand.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine