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Motherhood Quote by Elizabeth Taylor

"My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked"

About this Quote

Eight days of newborn blankness, then bam: a diamond. Elizabeth Taylor frames her origin story like a perfectly timed punchline, compressing an entire public mythology into two beats: delayed awakening, instant fixation. The joke lands because it’s audaciously over-determined. No one remembers what they saw as an infant, so the image isn’t meant as biography; it’s meant as branding. Taylor turns the tabloid narrative of her marriages into fate, not flaw.

The phrasing does double work. “My mother says” adds a wink of plausible deniability, outsourcing the “evidence” to family lore while keeping it glamorous. Then “I was hooked” flips romance into compulsion, making matrimony sound less like a moral choice and more like a hardwired appetite. It’s self-mockery, but also a defense: if desire is destiny, then criticism becomes beside the point. She’s not reckless; she’s consistent.

Context matters because Taylor’s love life wasn’t just personal gossip; it was mid-century celebrity as mass entertainment, a feedback loop between studio-era glamour and a press eager to turn women’s private decisions into public trials. By leading with an engagement ring, she acknowledges the spectacle and preempts it. The ring is both symbol and commodity, romance and headline. She’s telling you she knows the role she’s been cast in, and she can deliver the line better than anyone else.

Quote Details

TopicEngagement
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Taylor, Elizabeth. (2026, January 18). My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-mother-says-i-didnt-open-my-eyes-for-eight-23370/

Chicago Style
Taylor, Elizabeth. "My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-mother-says-i-didnt-open-my-eyes-for-eight-23370/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-mother-says-i-didnt-open-my-eyes-for-eight-23370/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Elizabeth Taylor (February 27, 1932 - March 23, 2011) was a Actress from England.

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