Anne Morrow Lindbergh Quotes

Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman.

It took a while for me to figure out how it all fit in, being a mother and being a woman and being a rock singer.

You cannot be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, and the perfect actor all at the same time.

What I increasingly felt, in marriage and in motherhood, was that to live as a woman and to live as a feminist were two different and possibly irreconcilable things.

I act, but I am a mother first and wife second.

As a writer and a mom, I wish I could split into two or three different people so I could be with my kids all day, write all day, and go out and do the interviews all day. Multiplicity woman!

I wish I could be three people. One of them would be in Washington holding teas and luncheons and attending any number of official social and charitable occasions. The second one could sit at a desk eight hours a day and really do her work as it should be done with proper care and attention given to each communication. She could see the people who want to talk about serious things and perhaps even be of some little use in helping other people to work out their plans. The third person could be a wife, mother … Oh well, somehow or other everything will get done but I am afraid nothing will be done very well!

I didn't know whether to join the army or go to art college.

Why can't you be both? Why can't I be on the basketball team but also be the student president?

If anything gets in the way of me being a good mom or wife, I simply say no.

I always think about my lifestyle when designing, so that's being a mother, being a career woman, being a wife, and being a woman who loves to entertain.

I wanted to direct more than I wanted to act. And I found I couldn't do everything.

You lose yourself when you first become a mum. It's easy to let yourself go.

I wanted to be an artist; it was be an artist or be an actor.

Growing up I didn't want to be an actor. I sort of didn't want to go into the family business; the main reason being there was something I wanted to do far more, which was be an artist.

Everybody knows the competing identities of people who have kids.

When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.

A good woman would rather be the mother of a genius than the wife of a hero

I suppose really I was a wife, a mother and a business woman, and then suddenly catapulted into this kind of world of craziness where it’s… there’s good sides and there’s bad sides…I wouldn't kind of turn the clock back and take another direction.

A lot of women want to be married and have kids one day, but before we get there, it's so important to establish who you are, find yourself, and live in that for a minute before you become somebody's wife and mother.

Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind.

And you can tell that Britney Spears is struggling with who she is. I think she has a team of agents and managers who are saying, yes, push the envelope, kiss Madonna, take off all your clothes. And she’s doing that because she doesn’t want to sacrifice this enormous platform that she’s built. But at the same time, she is sacrificing herself and you can see that in her eyes when she talks.

I never stopped being a mother, and I never stopped being an artist. Which is probably why my kids are so creative. When I'm with my kids I'm creating but I'm still a mom. I don't wear two different hats. My kids have always been on the set with me. I was breastfeeding on set. None of my kids would take a bottle so they could not leave my side for a very long time.

I have a life and do a lot of things, and so far my work has been my life. If I was a painter no one would question me about my age. I'm an artist, I hate saying that.