Marni Jackson Quotes

26 Sourced Quotes

This is a truism of child-raising, of course — whatever you give special time and attention to cooking, your children will despise and reject, with annoying gagging sounds.

Marni Jackson
Simple intervention - the time spent with a patient - is a very powerful ingredient of the patient-doctor contract. The evidence is against the traditions such as surgery for back pain being true - the evidence says it doesn't work.

Marni Jackson
Addiction might be redefined not as a character flaw but as a "biochemical deficit management." Our emotional habits will become an accepted factor of good health, along with slogans like "Heartache can be harmful to your unborn children."

Marni Jackson
Hasn't anyone thought to look at outcomes as a logical way to figure out what really works? Not until recently. That tells you how far out of the picture the patient has been.

Marni Jackson
Why are we, the most medicalized of societies, a culture in pain?

Marni Jackson
These doctors, who had long experience with people in pain in addition to their traditional training and schooling, had discovered that nothing happens without communication, treatment based on evidence of outcome, and what used to be called a good bedside manner.

Marni Jackson
Home alone with a wakeful newborn, I could shower so quickly that the mirror didn't fog and the backs of my knees stayed dry. The one-minute hair conditioner was too slow for me.

Marni Jackson
Household hollowness comes around in irregular cycles, like meteor showers. But the true sign of a bad patch is that it never feels temporary or fixable. It has a shudder of the inevitable to it. The thought crosses your mind that when love goes it goes all at once, and forever.

Marni Jackson
When a couple turns domestic, for the first while having to talk about the need for aluminum eaves troughing and other matters only gets in the way of the relationship. Then, magically, these negotiations take the place of the relationship.

Marni Jackson
First, women couldn't vote. Then they couldn't work. Now they can't sit down and read the paper.

Marni Jackson
Well, delusions are a wonderful thing, and they keep you company, too.

Marni Jackson
There seems to be a hole in the culture where mothers went. Then, when their kids went off to school or stopped having ear infections every three weeks, they emerged from the mother zone, and like everyone else, they forgot where they'd been. Amnesia surrounding motherhood is the rule, not the exception.

Marni Jackson
Housework hassles go on, are never resolved, and will probably extend into the afterlife ('Why am I the one who takes the clouds to the dry cleaners?').

Marni Jackson
Motherhood is like Albania—you can't trust the descriptions in the books, you have to go there.

Marni Jackson
The family on vacation doesn't truly travel — it explores itself.

Marni Jackson
Now I was someone who ate like a wolf, napped like a cat, and dreamed like a madwoman.

Marni Jackson
The first axiom of the family vacation is that someone, possibly everyone, will get sick.

Marni Jackson
Like an animal, cancer sleeps, prowls, hibernates, turns surly or placid.

Marni Jackson
At a certain point, the soul exits from a cherished photograph, because we have come to the end of our loving projection into that moment.

Marni Jackson
Hubris loves families. Complacency will be punished. The Old Testament lives on in viruses that take root the day you book a non-refundable flight.

Marni Jackson
The loss of control that characterizes the Flume Ride of family life begins with the experience of birth — indeed, it is epitomized by birth. Labor turned out to be long, surprisingly painful, and most illuminating.

Marni Jackson
Sex creates optimism. It seems to insinuate life in the future, even when procreation is not the point.

Marni Jackson
No one is in rehab or small claims court as I write this. I'm only talking about the ordinary anguish of raising normal children in this book — particularly the twilight stage, when they leave home, then come back, then leave again.

Marni Jackson
This becomes our last parental chore — to dwindle, to clam up, to say 'Well, you may be right' and step aside.

Marni Jackson
When a mother comes home with her new baby, she will find her abstractions are all concrete now. 'Freedom' now means being able to take a shower. 'Mobility' means being able to reach the glass of water on the dresser while not breaking the baby's suction on the breast. 'Flexibility' means being able to push the Record function on the VCR without dropping the baby.

Marni Jackson
It wasn't just that my breasts were sore and my legs seethed with restlessness at night. A knitted cap seemed to have settled on my brain as well. Never think that pregnancy is just a spare room in a woman's house; it changes everything — the heat, the light, the furniture.

Marni Jackson