Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man, and he was my brother.
Mona SimpsonRead
Even more than we want good love for ourselves, we want it for our children, those vulnerable satellites of our hearts that we send, unsteady, into the world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the deep desire parents have for their children to experience love and protection.
Mona Simpson's quote highlights the instinctual longing parents have not only for personal love but also for their children's ability to find and experience it. It likens children to 'vulnerable satellites,' emphasizing their fragility and the inherent wish that they navigate life with the same warmth and affection that parents themselves seek.
Themes
LoveChildrenParentingVulnerabilityProtection
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about parenting at the local community center.
More from Mona Simpson
All quotes →Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.
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We come into the world whole, all of us, but we don't know that, don't know that life will be taking large chunks out of us, forever.
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