Oh Max, you large lout, you arouse the eternal maternal in me.

But don't men have breast and womb envy?

Every man harbors an inner female territory ruled by his mother, from whom he can never entirely break free.

Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy

The feeling of motherhood in a woman becomes stronger as she grows older . In fact a time comes when every man is like a son in the eyes of a woman. There is not an ounce of sexual desire left in her heart. But his stage never comes in a man…he can never free himself from sexual desires.

"There is no such thing as maternal "instinct": the word does not in any case apply to the human species. The mother's attitude is defined by her total situation and by the way she accepts it."

Many women are discovering that the motherhood instinct implies a responsibility to be certain children have dads -- everyday, not far away; and some are aware that economic independence requires not holding on to her child as if it were her job.

In spite of the pangs of travail, the longing for motherhood remains the most powerful instinct in woman.

The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to child bearing,

High up among the branches of a mighty tree she hugged the shrieking infant to her bosom, and soon the instinct that was as dominant in this fierce female as it had been in the breast of his tender and beautiful mother — the instinct of mother love — reached out to the tiny man-child's half-formed understanding, and he became quiet.
Then hunger closed the gap between them, and the son of an English lord and an English lady nursed at the breast of Kala, the great ape.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Writing a novel is the closest thing a male writer will ever get to the experience of childbirth.

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.