Not My Daughter Quotes
"The very best thing that had happened in all of her thirty-five years."
"A family of two, fully comfortable with that and each other."
"You always said being a mother was wonderful. You said you loved me from the start. You said I was the best thing that ever happened to you."
"Bringing a child into the world is the most important thing a person can do. I want to leave my mark."
"It isn’t the money. I want things to be easier for you when you have kids."
"A baby isn’t only for the summer, and it doesn’t stay a baby for long."
"I’m supposed to know what girls your age are feeling and thinking, but lately with you, I just don’t."
"It’s what’s inside. I’ll be the best mom ever."
"I know I can be a good mother—even better than the moms we worked for this summer."
"Times had changed. Single mothers were commonplace now."
"This town lives and breathes responsibility. This family lives and breathes responsibility."
"Rich with dozens of shades of cranberry, balsam, and snow, they were the culmination of a year in which sales had doubled."
"Even now, a large basket in the center of the table held small knitting projects, while the bulk of its surface was covered with skeins waiting to be twisted."
"My daughter’s neck," she murmured as she tucked one end into the other.
"She had love," Susan argued in Kate’s defense.
"My childhood ended—was over, just like that."
"It was scary. My doctor was one step removed from my father. He delighted in telling me all the risks of having a baby at seventeen."
"It was like she had two patients, an infant and a seventeen-year-old—well, eighteen-year-old by then."
"Kids aren’t bad, just young. Their brains are still developing."
"That’s what makes this so absurd," Susan wailed. "I could give you a list of girls at school who are at risk of doing something like this. Our daughters’ names would not be on it."
"It’s not a baby to me yet. It’s something unwanted."
"I’m trying to decide if Jessica can survive," Sunny said. "How did you make it with an infant and no help?"
"She thought these colors were very pretty. Very pretty," she repeated in a monotone, startled by how much the blandness of the note still stung.
"It totally changed my life. My childhood ended—was over, just like that."
"Let people talk. We don’t care. We have something special, you and me."
"You’d think there’d be some understanding—everyone knows teenagers act out."
"Excuse me? Kate, your kids are all at the top of the class."
"What if you told him without using our names? Wouldn’t that solve your problem?"
"It might solve mine, but it wouldn’t solve yours."
"Phil is really good with kids. He might be a help with our girls."
"But I wanted my kids to do more than just manage."
"I’m doing exactly what my mother did, everything I swore I would never do, and that’s sick."
"You made a pact?" Meredith asked, her melodious alto sounding dismayed.
"That’s a pact, sweetheart," Susan said, having learned the lesson from Rick. "You can play with words all you want, but it is what it is."
"So do I," the counselor replied earnestly, "but I don’t have a husband or the means to support a baby, so there is no baby, and I am done with school, and the perfect age to have a child."
"How do you exaggerate this?" Sunny asked in disgust.
"No," she said, turning away from Lily again. "I can handle this. It isn’t cholera, only scandal."
"We have to contain the story. That means carefully defining it."
"Your father has done very well in his life, and that includes providing for his family."
"If you weren’t pregnant," Susan said, "she’d have had nothing to say. But it’s done, Jess. We have to figure out what to do now."
"My goal is to be direct. I don’t want the grapevine turning this into something it isn’t. Besides, tackling it head-on gives us an opportunity to discuss issues that are timely."
"If people are going to talk, you want them to know the facts."
"They did it because they love children, and because, acting together, telling themselves that this was their thing, they were able to override what they’d been taught."
"The idea is to let these girls finish their education so that they can make something of their lives. Wouldn’t that be best for the babies?"
"Singling girls out doesn’t solve the problem. Communication does."
"My daughter and I talk all the time. But when a seventeen-year-old wants to hide something, she can be pretty good at it."
"I’ve suspended students for bullying, for writing on the bathroom walls, for any number of infractions that involve harming someone or something, but there’s nothing in the handbook that outlaws pregnancy."
"The goal of the clinic is to give students an alternative when they can’t get help at home—and yes, it’s for education."
"I can be honest. I can tell students firsthand the downside of being a teenage mother."
"Nathaniel Hawthorne also came from Salem, which bowed to crowd hysteria and hanged innocent women."
"Here’s a basic lesson in Mothering 101, sweetheart. The buck stops here."
"We’re putting the downside of teenage pregnancy front and center. We’re giving parents reasons to carry on a dialogue with their kids."
"Vigilance. A good mother watches her kids closely."
"In order to have prevented these pregnancies, a mother would have to eavesdrop on her daughter’s conversations, monitor her texts, hack into Facebook."
"At some point a parent has to let go, even if it means the child falls."
"If we don’t try to understand what the other is feeling, we’re lost."
"Children need to know what their parents expect."
"A good mother is sensitive to what her child is feeling."
"I want the baby to have everything it needs."
"My way or the highway—that was my dad’s credo, and look where it got us."
"All I wanted was a baby. How did this get so messed up?"
"Not here," she said. "He’s a senior, Evan. A suspension on his record now raises a red flag for college admissions officers. This is a bright boy who is struggling to keep up with even brighter older siblings and parents he desperately wants to please."
"When a child pummels another child, he goes into time-out now—not tomorrow or next week."
"He cheats when he thinks he’s failing," Susan explained as she shouldn’t have had to with a man of Evan’s experience, "but we’re working with him. He and his parents are in counseling."
"This isn’t a case of bullying," Susan argued. "When Michael cheats, he hurts no one but himself."
"If a student was suspended, what did he learn by sitting at home? Conversely, if his punishment was, say, to tutor illiterate adults and, in the process he realized his own gift, a greater good was achieved."
"I hire and fire my staff, which means that your job is in my hands. Doesn’t that worry you?"
"Not all mothers are like this. Don’t these mothers set rules? What are these mothers thinking?"
"This is my child. I don’t care what’s wrong with him. Miracles happen, don’t they?"
"You were discussing it is a violation of Michael’s privacy—and totally unprofessional. You were basically saying that your way of disciplining Michael is better than mine."
"I think," he cautioned, "that if you’re still adamant against taking a leave, you’ll have to be proactive."
"I don’t imagine anything will happen because of the letters. You just have to hang in there a little longer."
"Life doesn’t stop. You have exams in January. Yes, it does matter, even if you’re going to Percy State. You can’t let your grades slide."
"Being pregnant right now is not what I wanted for Lily. I wouldn’t have minded if she miscarried spontaneously. If that makes me a horrible mother, I’m a horrible mother, but my first thought was for the well-being of my own child."
"I’m thinking I have a helluva lot of frequent flyer miles and nowhere to go."
"You can’t stay in Zaganack. I might get used to leaning on you, and that’d be bad because you will leave, sooner or later. It’s in your blood."
"They’re spoiled. Maybe I have to unspoil them."
"The baby is fine! No genetic disorder, no chromosome abnormality, no neural tube defect. He is perfect."
"I may be giving Lily the wrong message. I may have given her the wrong one all along. I thought I was teaching her to be strong and self-sufficient."
"I’ve never hated you. This has nothing to do with who you are, but with who I am. I’m Jessica’s mother."
"I remember when you were in school, Mom. Maybe I was three, maybe four, but when I woke up at night, you’d be studying. If I was sick, you worked in my room."
"There’s two choices. Ms. Tate can take a leave. Or she can be dismissed."
"It isn’t as simple as that," Tanner put in, but Abby wasn’t done with Pam.
"Did you tell those men they were wrong, Mom? Did you tell them Susan isn’t responsible for things she didn’t do?"
"But she is responsible," Tanner said. "That’s what it means to hold a position of authority."
"She’s your friend, Mom. Maybe if you come right out and publicly say you’re on Susan’s side, this wouldn’t be so bad."
"I didn’t think it would get to this. But now Lily has a baby that is sick, and you all are saying Susan is a bad mother."
"Like that guarantees happiness?" the girl asked, pushing back from the table and rising to her full Perry height.
"It’s different. I’m a man. You’re the mother. You should have known."
"Like it guarantees I’ll grow old with three friends I love? Like it guarantees I’ll ever be able to have a baby? You don’t understand."
"What about going out on a limb for a friend when you know it’s the right thing to do?"
"I had you, didn’t I?" Then, "You’ll have your baby." Then, "Maybe this just isn’t the right time."
"We both have to do it. We could make a pact, the two of us. No more trying. Just doing."
"But they do. And you need to be okay with it."