Mother Land Quotes

“She would rather be respected than desired and she didn't understand why a woman would make a different choice than that. When she had been younger, she had felt there was something lacking in her, the way she didn't seem to want passion, pleasure, the way her friends sometimes whispered that they did, the way they giggled over vegetable markets, comparing their husbands' genitals, the way they sighed over kissing scenes in movies, complaining that their husbands never touched them that way anymore. Now Swati didn’t have to feel that there was anything wrong with her. A woman her age wasn’t supposed to want such things.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Everyone talked about love all the time, but what was love, really, other than being known? Being seen and understood?”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Of course she missed her mother. Didn't everyone? Wasn't that what being an adult WAS, really? Missing your mother?”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“How different the world was when she had a purpose. How much better. Everything was more painful when she was aimless.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Everything is better with tea," she told him.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“What was it about people that made a stranger someone you could love, and a person you had known for all your life someone you didn’t know at all?”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“I think we should both go home, and we will find what we want when we do. I want a life that is mine. I think you do, too. I think you will find that if you think about what it is you were trying to leave behind.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Rachel hugged him and walked off into the afternoon, sure her future held adventure. It had to, didn't it?”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“She was full of contentment, full of the knowledge of what she had to do next, how she had to stop finding escape routes from her life, how she had to stop moving, find a place to BE.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“She had decided to try not to be afraid anymore of the things she wanted.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“...nothing could give her purpose; she had to take it.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“There is more in the eyes. More longing. Little things mean more. Love comes through poetry, through the falling of a flower, through two people who both love the rain. Not all this kissing kissing kissing.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“...relieved in that way a good cry, when you really need it, is a kind of medicine.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“When had her son become a whole person, with a whole life she didn't understand, a job that didn't make sense to her? It was like children woke up one day as people. How did that happen?”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Sometimes, a small, sad part of Rachel wondered of perhaps he was having an affair. Arjun had had an affair, Swati had explained, with someone he had met at his tennis club. Why did people do that? Why did they have to betray each other, to make the problem between two people seem like they were really about someone else entirely? It was the coward's way, she thought, To throw someone else in the middle of your own fire.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Magda lived a life lit with courage. She was forever willing to see the best in others, to be hopeful, to open her heart.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Her body felt like it was buzzing when she woke up in the morning, brimming with energy in a way she hadn't felt for months. THIS IS WHAT PURPOSE FEELS LIKE, she reminded herself.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“What was the point of any of it? Who was she trying to prove anything to? It was over. She had not fallen, she had jumped, She might as well keep jumping. It would, then, be her choice, in the end, where she landed.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“An unattended husband is always a bad thing...”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“What would a person possibly DO outside alone? It was hard enough to be INSIDE alone. Outside would be impossible.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Gossip was like malaria, highly contagious, and eternal in the body.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“That was part of why she had left, really, because she didn't even KNOW what she might want, only that it would not be found in the life she was living.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“It is easy to be afraid. Everyone stays where they are because they do not know what will happen to them when they go to a new place. But they are still the same. They can do more than they think,”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“It was sad that this was the way they ended up communicating, two people who had sworn to live their lives together and spoke to each other on machines, instead of in person.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Reading would have been a victory, there, something she had committed to despite the obstacles. Something she felt proud of accomplishing. Now, with nothing but time, reading just felt like a way of distracting herself from reality.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“So much of life had to be endured, Swati thought. Not the way, of course, people living horrible lives endured so much, but the way that even ordinary people like herself has most of their lives happen TO them.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“Love, it seemed, for Bunny, was an act of will. She had been determined to love, and so she did.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“She had been a good mother, she had protected her child from the reality of his parents as people. That was what it was to be a parent, to hide your personhood and care for your child.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land

“It was so easy to be sure of things when you were twenty.”
― Leah Franqui, Mother Land