The Mother

“However impatient she might be in the day, however filled with little sudden angers, at night she was all tenderness.””

— Pearl S. Buck

“It seemed so strange, so endless, this turning of some hidden wheel, this passing on of link caught onto link in some never ending chain that she was dazed with thinking of it even dimly, since she was not one to think into the meanings of what passed before her, but only taking all that came for what it was.””

— Pearl S. Buck

“and looked sharply across the street. There was only one house””

— Pearl S. Buck

“... لا أظن إن هذا ممكن، أنا لم أسمع أبداً بمثل هذه الجريمة، إن قتل الإنسان، وسرقة البيوت، وتجويع الوالدين، هي الجرائم بمعناها، لكن كيف تسرق الأرض؟ هل يمكن أن يطويها كأنها قطعة من القماش وياخذها معه ويخفيها في مكان ما؟””

— Pearl S. Buck

“At that hour of deep loathing she was healed of all her heat and youth, and she was young no more.””

— Pearl S. Buck

“wept in the way that women do when their hearts are too full with sorrow of their life and spilled and running over and they care no more except they must be eased somehow because all of life is too heavy for them.””

— Pearl S. Buck

“She knew that men cannot work as women do, but have the hearts of children always in them,””

— Pearl S. Buck

“and when the hour is come that has been set for each of us before ever we can walk or talk, then what need of mourning?””

— Pearl S. Buck

“And then she grew uneasy and full of gloom and thought to herself that if the child were joy yet was it a new gate for sorrow to enter by, too, and so is every child...””

— Pearl S. Buck