Conception Quotes

“Material and technical changes are mostly quite visible. But less visible are the changes in the mind of the people, their way of thinking, their conception of the world and the quality of their fears. ("Horizon and Vision" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I was conceived because it would be good for my House to have an heir and because my parents' genes ticked the right set of boxes. You were probably conceived because your parents loved each other."

"According to our mother," Bern said, "he was conceived because she was too wasted to remember a rubber."

Mad Rogan stopped chewing.

"I was conceived because my mother skipped bail. Her boyfriend at the time threatened to call the cops on her so she had to do something to keep him from doing it," Bern said helpfully.

Awesome. Just the right kind of information to share.

"Aunt Giselea isn't the best mother," I said. "There's one in every family.”
― Ilona Andrews, Burn for Me

“Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting... By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

“All children are atheists, they have no idea of God.”
― Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, System of Nature

“Turning something from an idea
into a reality
can make it seem smaller.
It changes from unearthly to earthly.

The imagination has no limits.
The physical world does.
The work exists in both.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“The human population would probably be way less than a thousand, if ejaculation were not usually accompanied by an orgasm.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The only kind of universe that I can even begin to conceive is an inconceivable one.”
― Ilyas Kassam

“When he was in college, a famous poet made a useful distinction for him. He had drunk enough in the poet's company to be compelled to describe to him a poem he was thinking of. It would be a monologue of sorts, the self-contemplation of a student on a summer afternoon who is reading Euphues. The poem itself would be a subtle series of euphuisms, translating the heat, the day, the student's concerns, into symmetrical posies; translating even his contempt and boredom with that famously foolish book into a euphuism.

The poet nodded his big head in a sympathetic, rhythmic way as this was explained to him, then told him that there are two kinds of poems. There is the kind you write; there is the kind you talk about in bars. Both kinds have value and both are poems; but it's fatal to confuse them.

In the Seventh Saint, many years later, it had struck him that the difference between himself and Shakespeare wasn't talent - not especially - but nerve. The capacity not to be frightened by his largest and most potent conceptions, to simply (simply!) sit down and execute them. The dreadful lassitude he felt when something really large and multifarious came suddenly clear to him, something Lear-sized yet sonnet-precise. If only they didn't rush on him whole, all at once, massive and perfect, leaving him frightened and nerveless at the prospect of articulating them word by scene by page. He would try to believe they were of the kind told in bars, not the kind to be written, though there was no way to be sure of this except to attempt the writing; he would raise a finger (the novelist in the bar mirror raising the obverse finger) and push forward his change. Wailing like a neglected ghost, the vast notion would beat its wings into the void.

Sometimes it would pursue him for days and years as he fled desperately. Sometimes he would turn to face it, and do battle. Once, twice, he had been victorious, objectively at least. Out of an immense concatenation of feeling, thought, word, transcendent meaning had come his first novel, a slim, pageant of a book, tombstone for his slain conception. A publisher had taken it, gingerly; had slipped it quietly into the deep pool of spring releases, where it sank without a ripple, and where he supposes it lies still, its calm Bodoni gone long since green. A second, just as slim but more lurid, nightmarish even, about imaginary murders in an imaginary exotic locale, had been sold for a movie, though the movie had never been made. He felt guilt for the producer's failure (which perhaps the producer didn't feel), having known the book could not be filmed; he had made a large sum, enough to finance years of this kind of thing, on a book whose first printing was largely returned.”
― John Crowley, Novelty: Four Stories

“The ingenerating of a principle of grace in the soul seems in Scripture to be compared to the conceiving of Christ in the womb... And the conception of Christ in the womb of the blessed virgin by the power of the Holy Ghost, seems to be a designed resemblance of the conception of Christ in the soul of a believer by the power of the same Holy Ghost.”
― Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections

“Holy Mother we do believe,
That without sin Thou didst conceive;
May we now in Thee believing,
Also sin without conceiving.”
― A. P. Herbert

“Opportunities can become obstacles, same way obstacles can become opportunities; it all depends on how they are being interpreted by the mind of a person.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Watchwords

“The desire to procreate, in some, is so strong that it creates a sort of tunnel vision in the afflicted. One can’t see beyond trying to make a baby, and they never stop to think about what it will really be like once said baby has in fact, arrived.”
― Karen Fowler, Reflections on Motherhood

“No individual existence can be traced further than the moment of conception, which determined that what was to be born would be this person and no other. The person may change from baby to child, and from boy to man, but through all these changes he will remain this person and cannot be another, because all possibilities to the contrary that may have existed before the moment of conception ended forever with the moment of conception.”
― Nick Joaquín, Culture and History

“We're just ruined by sex, women---our bodies, our psyches. We're sexually assaulted every five minutes. We're infected with everything. Traumatized by conceiving, by not conceiving. But let's keep at it? Like, you've been in a maiming car accident and then you're supposed to want to get back in the car? I mean, what?”
― Catherine Newman, Sandwich

“The banana flavour of his accidental conception, and the banana theme of his accidental death, now all seemed to conspire against him and rather suggest the universe, Mr Fate or whoever did have some sort of master plan after all. Despite all his earlier conjecturing, maybe the universe, Mr Fate or whoever was laughing its fat and meddling head at him. The outlandish evidence did seem to speak for itself, truly suggesting a mocking narrative devised by some mischievous author because quite simply a banana condom had brought Midnight into the world and a banana skin had seen him out. Putting those two seeming truths together, Midnight was once again forced to ask such confused and searching questions like:

What is this place, where am I heading? And what’s the deal with all the ruddy bananas?”
― Tom Conrad

“Every culture in the universe has a very different opinion about exactly when life begins. But we're all pretty much in agreement on when it's over.”
― Brian K. Vaughan

“The time is up for the wrong conceptions and myths surrounding mental health and mental illness that consist a crime against mental health sufferers and pose a threat to the quality of the evolution of humanity.”
― Maria Karvouni

“Sometimes the Light searched and listened for something unknown, but mostly it was warm and happy.”
― Susan Foot, The Light: A light is born; a tiny spark begins its journey

“Did you know that embryologists have recently captured the moment of conception via fluorescence microscopy? What they discovered is that at the exact moment a sperm penetrates an egg, the egg releases billions of zinc atoms that emit light. Sparks fly, literally! That miracle of conception is a microcosm that mirrors God's first four words.”
― Mark Batterson, Whisper: How to Hear the Voice of God

“For all the drama, romance and seeming magic of childbearing, what happy expectant parents are really celebrating is nothing more than a parasite-host relationship. At the moment of conception, an effectively alien creature commandeers the mother's womb and uses it as a sort of beachhead from which to seize control of her entire body.”
― Jeffrey Kluger, The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed--in Your World

“I was once pro-choice and the thing that changed my mind was, I read my husband's biology books, medical books, and what I learned ... At the moment of conception, a life starts. And this life has its own unique set of DNA, which contains a blueprint for the whole genetic makeup. The sex is determined. We know there's a life because it's growing and changing.”
― Kathy Ireland

“Conception
***
Someone's vanity, status, wealth
And whatever it has,
Will collapse when it comes,
To realize that,
I am a giver, not a taker
As a candle cannot prevail sun”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“A man is only ever himself when he has let go of the follies of being a man, and sobriety is that steel door separating man from his true conception.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“A woman before becoming a mother first has to stimulate the status of a wife since that, both characters, enlighten the conception of its dignity, and sacrifices.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“Andrew thought that it was strange that humans would choose the day of coming forth from the womb as the significant thing to commemorate. He knew something of human biology, and it seemed to him that it would be much more important to focus on the moment of the actual creation of the organism, when the sperm cell entered the ovum and the process of cell division began. Surely that was the real point of origin of any person!
Certainly the new person was already alive - if not capable of independent functioning - during the nine months spent within the womb.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Positronic Man

“The life is neither short and nor long; it is just your conception of the soul journey. It lies, on you, how you feel that, short or long.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“Creation begins with conception.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Who can understand how a child is formed in a womb of a woman? So we can never know the thoughts of God nor understand our existence or our departure.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Now all you two have to do is wait till the sun goes down," he said, adding mischievously, "Fool thing to do, too, if you ask me, gettin' married near the longest day-and the shortest night of the year.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“She laughed. 'Ahh, Donna, luv, I've missed you.' She leaned forward. 'And you've no need to race anywhere; you've already won the biggest of all races--'

'What race? Aside from that screenplay competition--which is the most amazing thing ever--I've never won a thing in my life.'

'The night your father spent himself inside your mother he unleashed a billion sperm cells inside of her.'

'Oh, Jeezes, Elly--'

'That's the population of India, luv--all swimming for that one egg. And you outswam them all. There, what does that tell you--you won there, didn't you?'

'I--never quite thought of it that way.”
― Donna Morrissey, Pluck: A memoir of a Newfoundland childhood and the raucous, terrible, amazing journey to becoming a novelist