Explain

Famous quotes containing the word explain:

    we do not explain my husband’s insane abuse
    and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has fled
    or that my father opened like a walnut and then was dead.
    Your palms fold over me like knees. Love is the only use.
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    Wags try to invent new stories to tell about the legislature, and end by telling the old one about the senator who explained his unaccustomed possession of a large roll of bills by saying that someone pushed it over the transom while he slept. The expression “It came over the transom,” to explain any unusual good fortune, is part of local folklore.
    —For the State of Montana, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    If you could choose your parents,... we would rather have a mother who felt a sense of guilt—at any rate who felt responsible, and felt that if things went wrong it was probably her fault—we’d rather have that than a mother who immediately turned to an outside thing to explain everything, and said it was due to the thunderstorm last night or some quite outside phenomenon and didn’t take responsibility for anything.
    D.W. Winnicott (20th century)