Nannie Quotes

“The Agency was doubtful, because they had already sent a lot of nurses and nannies and governesses to Mr. and Mrs. Brown's family. 'The person you want,' they said, 'is Nurse Matilda.”

“Family holidays and weekends are really brightly colored memories, full of my mother and father, rather than our nannies and au pairs.”

“People have nannies and big cars, and they want to go to Maui for Christmas. When there are those kind of stakes involved, people get ruthless.”

“Fairy tales were stupid. And dangerous.”

“It was only as part of the civilizing process that storytelling developed within the aristocratic and bourgeois homes, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through governesses and nannies, and later in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries through mothers, who told bedtime stories.”

“The sound of an English accent distracted her and lifted her spirits. She associated English accents with singing teapots, schools for witchcraft, and the science of deduction. This wasn't, she knew, terribly sophisticated of her, but she had no real guilt about it. She felt the English were themselves to blame for her feelings. They had spent a century relentlessly marketing their detectives and wizards and nannies, and they had to live with the results.”

“Ryan allowed himself a moment to enjoy the sight of her legs, long and muscular and indicative of her previous life as a dancer.Off-limits nannies shouldn't be allowed to have legs like that. A man could only get through so many lonely nights before he started to dream of sleek limbs wrapping around him and never letting go.Thankfully for them both, she lifted those sleek limbs away from his grasp. Out of reach, out of mind.Or at least in theory, anyway.”

“Children are taught to look down on their nurses (nannies), to treat them as mere servants. When their task is completed the child is withdrawn or the nurse is dismissed. Her visits to her foster-child are discouraged by a cold reception. After a few years the child never sees her again. The mother expects to take her place, and to repair by her cruelty the results of her own neglect. But she is greatly mistaken; she is making an ungrateful foster-child, not an affectionate son; she is teaching him ingratitude, and she is preparing him to despise at a later day the mother who bore him, as he now despises his nurse.”

“Could I speak to you for a moment, madam?' said Nannie to Agnes.It was at moments of crisis like this that Mary chiefly envied her Aunt Agnes's imperturbable disposition. Most mothers feel a hideous sinking at the heart when these fatal words are pronounced, but Agnes only showed a kindly and inactive interest.In anyone else Mary might have suspected unusual powers of bluff, hiding trembling knees, a feeling of helpless nausea, flashes of light behind the eyes, storm in the brain, and a general desire to say 'Take double your present wages, but don't tell me what it is you want to speak to me about.' But Agnes, placidly confident in the perfection of her own family and the unassailable security of her own existence, was only capable of feeling a mild curiosity and barely capable of showing it.”

“How's the blood-stream, my dear, invaluable little woman? How's the blood-stream?"..."It's quite comfortable, sir...I think, sir, thank yo”