TV Quote of the Day (‘Maude,’ Interfering With Her Daughter’s Life)

[Unable to find a job, frustrated about being a single mom living in her mother's house, Carol decides to accept a marriage proposal from a man she doesn’t love. A chagrined Maude knocks on the door of her room.]

Maude Findlay [played by Bea Arthur]: "Honey, do you mind if I come in? If I promise…."

Carol Traynor [played by Adrienne Barbeau]: "Promise what?"

Maude: "If I promise not to talk like a mother?"

Carol: "All right."

Maude [striding over to Carol]: "If I promise not to talk about the way you're wrecking your life."— Maude, Season 1, Episode 7, “Love and Marriage,” original air date Oct 24, 1972, teleplay by Ralph Goodman, Budd Grossman and Frank Tarloff, directed by Bill Hobin

Quote of the Day (Shirley Jackson, on a Daughter Becoming a Teen)

“Last year I sent my daughter, an agreeable child who liked to play baseball and thought boys were silly, off to camp. I got back – and it only took two months – a creature who slept with curlers in her hair, bought perfume from the five-and-ten, and addressed me as nothing but ‘Mother, honestly!’

“By now she also calls me ‘Honestly, Mother!’ and ‘Mother, really’ and sometimes just plain ‘Mother.’ She worries constantly about her figure—usually with one hand in the refrigerator. She thinks any beardless adolescent who sings through his nose is ‘cute.’ She has perceived that in addition to being slightly behind the times in my dress and manner, I am hopelessly dated in my grasp of teenagers–especially of what ‘everyone else’ is allowed to do. This, incidentally, is a phrase I can't even write without feeling a little chill down my back. My daughter says it without difficulty. I tell her, ‘I don’t care what everyone else does…’ and ‘No daughter of mine is going to…’ and ‘When I was your age, I had…’ Neither of us listens to the other. She no longer thinks boys are silly.”—American horror and humor writer Shirley Jackson (1916-1965), “Motherly, Honestly!”, originally printed in Good Housekeeping, reprinted in Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings, edited by Laurence Hyman and Sarah Hyman DeWitt (2015)

It can be hard to believe that the author of such disturbing fiction as “The Lottery,” The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle could deliver slices of wry like the above passage to the same primary audience—American housewives and mothers—as Erma Bombeck would later do.

But these humorous essays on her family—whose tone could also be modulated to ironic short fiction like “Charles”—helped pay the bills for Shirley Jackson, as she raised the four children of herself and her husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman.

And they can still be appreciated by readers—even those who, in October, might be more tempted to seek out the macabre novels and short stories that make Jackson a crucial link between Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King.

For a brief description of the life and career of Jackson, see my blog post from six years ago, on the centennial of her birth.

Quote of the Day (Oscar Wilde, on His Unusual Mother)

“Come home with me. I want to introduce you to my mother. We have founded a society for the suppression of virtue.”—Trinity College undergrad—and future playwright—Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), inviting a classmate to a Merrion Square (Dublin) salon held by his only slightly less flamboyant mother, the poet Speranza Wilde, quoted in Hesketh Pearson, The Life of Oscar Wilde (1919)

Quote of the Day (Nora Ephron, on Cooking and Prosperity)

“My mother was a good recreational cook, but what she basically believed about cooking was that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.”—American screenwriter-director, essayist, and novelist Nora Ephron (1941-2012), Heartburn (1983)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Gilmore Girls,’ on Manicures vs. ‘Hobo Hands’)

[SUV pulling up]

Lorelai Gilmore [played by Lauren Graham]: [Sighs] “Okay, mom, what's next?”

Emily [played by Kelly Bishop]: “You don't have to say it like that.”

Lorelai: “I just spent the last hour and a half watching you get a manicure.”

Emily: “It's my standing appointment, Lorelai.”

Lorelai: “Yes, except I was the one standing 'cause there weren't enough seats.”

Emily: “Well, if I'd missed that appointment, it would be a week before I could get another and I'd be walking around with hobo hands.”— Gilmore Girls, Season 6, Episode 21, “Driving Miss Gilmore,” original airdate May 2, 2006, teleplay by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, directed by Jamie Babbit

Quote of the Day (Brian Williams, on the Effect of His Irish-Catholic Mom)

“I had a very forward-looking, boisterous, Bea Arthur-like, loud, Irish Catholic mother, who was the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. And based on nothing, she used to watch local news in New York and say to me: ‘I think you could do this. I think you could be better than these people.’ And I would say: ‘Mom, I’d love to have this conversation, but I have to mow the neighbor’s lawn.’”—Brian Williams, on whether he always wanted to be a newsman, quoted in Philip Galanes, “Fast Thoughts, Slow Jams: Brian Williams and Seth Meyers Share Notes Over Lunch,” The New York Times, August 24, 2014

(Photo of Brian Williams by David Shankbone, taken at the Vanity Fair celebration for the 9th annual Tribeca Film Festival, 2009.)