Words matter. These are the best Ann Hood Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
When I did get married and then had children, it was Beatles’ songs I sang to them at night. As one of the youngest of 24 cousins, I had never held an infant or baby-sat. I didn’t know any lullabies, so I sang Sam and Grace to sleep with ‘I Will’ and ‘P.S. I Love You.’
Grief doesn’t have a plot. It isn’t smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.
I was a mother who worked ridiculously hard to keep catastrophe at bay. I didn’t allow my kids to eat hamburgers for fear of E. coli. I didn’t allow them to play with rope, string, balloons – anything that might strangle them. They had to bite grapes in half, avoid lollipops, eat only when I could watch them.
Since my brother died in 1982, my parents and I had formed a shaky tripod of a family; now that I’d lost my father too, it was too easy for me to glimpse a future point where I alone was the keeper of not just my own childhood memories, but of my family lore.
I have learned that there is more power in a good strong hug than in a thousand meaningful words.
In my adult life, I had spent a lot of time angry at God, mostly over the sudden deaths in my family – my brother at 30, my daughter at 5.
I am a step mother, so how children deal with divorce is something I’ve witnessed first hand and thought about a lot.
Dead bodies do get a grayish blue/purple hue because blood pools in the capillaries and the body starts to decompose. It’s not smurf blue, but it’s not a pleasant shade.
After 9/11, new security measures not only added longer lines and earlier check-ins, but took away our privilege of carrying knitting needles or our favorite moisturizer on board with us. Although we want to be safe when we fly, in some ways it all just adds to the misery of our experience.
My cousins and I used to play Beatle wives. We all wanted to be married to Paul, but John was O.K. too. None of us wanted Ringo. Or even worse, George.
As someone who has lived the nightmare of losing a child, I know that the enormous hole left behind remains forever.
I am the woman with the cool vintage glasses… I am the proud wife beside her husband… I am the writer who has written a new novel.
When we deal with death, the pupils will always be fixed and dilated, which indicates that there is no longer brain activity or response.
There are so many cruel decisions parents have to make when their child dies. The funeral director requested a sheet for the coffin, and I sent the cozy flannel one, pale blue with happy snowmen, that had just been put away with the winter linens.
I often feel that I have a split personality. I love more than anything to be in my study writing, but when it’s time to do a book tour, I love that extroverted part, too – talking to people, reading, traveling, going out into the world.
God does give us more than we can bear sometimes.
I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer – I just was one.
When I was seven years old, I fell in love with a series published by Bobbs-Merrill called ‘The Childhood of Famous Americans.’ In it, historical figures like Clara Barton, Nancy Hanks, Elias Howe, Patrick Henry, and dozens more came to life for me as children.
I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes – the sparkly ones, the leopard rain boots, the ballet slippers – stood in a corner.
For reasons I can’t remember, my family eventually stopped attending church, and I started questioning the Catholic Church’s beliefs. I dabbled a little, but nothing stuck.
