Stepmothers Quotes

• Better a serpent than a stepmother!

  Euripides

  Serpent

  Euripides (1941). “The Alcestis”, p.21, Library of Alexandria

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• To be sure a stepmother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Marriage, Girl, Men

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2015). “Wifes And Daughters”, p.76, Elizabeth Gaskell

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• Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another s.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Mother, Nature, Heart

  Desiderius Erasmus, Erika Rummel (1990). “The Erasmus Reader”, p.156, University of Toronto Press

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• Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.

  John Dewey

  Mother, Nature, Home

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Abraham Kaplan (2008). “The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925-1953, Volume 10: 1934, Art as Experience”, p.34, SIU Press

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• I've never heard a song written from a stepmother's point of view, about their family.

  LeAnn Rimes

  Song, Views, Point Of View

  "LeAnn Rimes' scandal magnet days are over". Interview with Allison Stewart, www.chicagotribune.com. July 7, 2016.

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• A day is sometimes our mother, sometimes our stepmother.

  Hesiod

  Mother, Literature, Sometimes

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• Stepmothers in books usually behave very spitefully towards the children entrusted to them. But he was now learning by his own experience that in real life this does not always happen.

  Murasaki Shikibu

  Family, Children, Real

  Murasaki Shikibu (2011). “The Tale of Genji”, p.642, Tuttle Publishing

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• The new-come stepmother hates the children born to a first wife.

  Euripides

  Children, Hate, Wife

  Euripides (2013). “Euripides I: Alcestis, Medea, The Children of Heracles, Hippolytus”, p.30, University of Chicago Press

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• The reason that stepmothers are often the bad guy in fairy tales is because people died in childbirth, all the time, so fathers remarried and there would be a struggle between the children and the new wife, in terms of who would inherit what.

  Chris Weitz

  Children, Father, Struggle

  Source: collider.com

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• If a book has a predictable storyline or familiar situations, there's little satisfaction for me in writing it. A woman deciding which man she'll spend her life with? I've read that story a million times, but a stepmother deciding which of her children she'll save in a freak accident? Now that's a challenge.

  Jillian Medoff

  Children, Book, Writing

  Source: bookmagnet.wordpress.com

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• Tell me the story, Pew. . . . It was a woman. You always say that. There's always a woman somewhere, child; a princess, a witch, a stepmother, a mermaid, a fairy godmother, or one as wicked as she is beautiful, or as beautiful as she is good. Is that the complete list? Then there is the woman you love. Who's she? That's another story.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Beauty, Beautiful, Children

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.82, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I've always thought it would be fun to update "Hansel and Gretel." I'd have these white parents in the suburbs with an income of fifty or sixty thousand dollars. Daddy loses his job, and the wicked stepmother says, "We could get along, we could keep our Mastercharge, if you'd just get rid of those shitty kids." Finally the father hires a limo and tells the driver, "Drop 'em off on Lenox Avenue in Harlem at two in the morning." These two little white kids land there. They're menaced. And this supposedly nice black lady says, "Would you like some candy?"

  Stephen King

  Morning, Jobs, Fun

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• I certainly think Halle Berry's a wonderful role model. She's a terrific stepmother and has shown that in so many beautiful ways and has made such enormous strides for women culturally and such great successes as an actress and philanthropist.

  Sharon Stone

  Beautiful, Thinking, Role Models

  Interview with Katie Hampson, www.dailymail.co.uk. August 4, 2004.

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• Return with your shield, or upon it.’ (Julian's stepmother)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Shields, Return

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• My stepmother sold my birth certificate and someone asked why I didn't buy it back. I don't know, really. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It was mine. It cost me nothing and suddenly I had to buy it back.

  Paul McCartney

  Cost, Birth, Certificates

  "COVER STORY : Ob-la-di, Life Goes On : Paul McCartney was crushed by the Beatles' dissolution in 1970, but he's singing a different tune now (about and with the group)". Interview with Robert Hilburn, articles.latimes.com. November 12, 1995.

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• I'm sorry to have to tell you this way, but your mother and I are separating." When I pressed my mouth together, he corrected, "Stepmother. We're just - We're going in different directions." "I don't know what to say, Dad. 'Hurray' just seems wrong.

  Darynda Jones

  Mother, Sorry, Dad

  Darynda Jones (2013). “Fifth Grave Past the Light”, p.314, Macmillan

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• Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.

  Martin Amis

  Mother, Thinking, Wicked

  "When darkness met light" by Martin Amis, www.theguardian.com. May 11, 2000.

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• My mother - my stepmother, really, she herself have been what they call an elocutionist. And she was the one who first encouraged me to write poetry, because she used to read it to us. And then when I began to write when I was nine years old, my first poem was published in the Amsterdam News. I called it "The Graveyard."

  Ruby Dee

  Mother, Writing, Years

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Being a stepmother has worked out very well for me. I love my stepchildren very much.

  Philippa Gregory

  Stepchildren, Stepchild, Wells

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• As a female in a home with a whole bunch of brothers and being very close to my father, without a mother and later having a hostile relationship with my stepmother, there were all kinds of Freudian issues rising from possessing a female body that I had to negotiate with no guidance, and I did this negotiation almost instinctually.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim

  Mother, Brother, Father

  "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.

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• When I was about 19, my stepmother said - because this was back in the 80s - that I had Robert Wagners pompadour. I said, What are you talking about? You mean the guy from Hart to Hart?

  Michael Weatherly

  Mean, Talking, Guy

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• ...and then she glared at me, the same glare my stepmother used to give me when I gave her the Nazi salute. That woman was so touchy about her resemblance to Hitler.

  Darynda Jones

  Giving, Nazi, Used

  Darynda Jones (2011). “For I Have Sinned (A Charley Davidson Story): A HeroesandHeartbreakers.com Original”, p.52, Macmillan

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• In medieval Europe, childbirth was a leading cause of death. So widowed fathers with children were quite common, meaning stepmothers were equally common.

  Robert Paul Weston

  Children, Father, Europe

  Source: www.yabookshelf.com

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• I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of The Wind in the Willows, which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.

  John le Carre

  Father, Book, Reading

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• Eight kids and a stepmother, and I just wanted to be out of there and so when I got a scholarship from Boston to the Schillinger House, which is now the Berklee School of Music, I couldn't wait to get out of there.

  Quincy Jones

  School, Kids, Eight

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