I swear, if I could eat my children, I would. I’d consume them like some beast in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, but in a friendlier, more momlike way. Their little bodies make me salivate. It...

We no longer get work out of our children; today we get meaning.

He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a...

The only thing you really need to be a writer is time. Regular, consistent time, quality time when you’re not tired. I write on the bus to and from work, that’s my time, 1 or...

If you do not have a close friendship with your children, I will.” Child Molester warning all parents from the book Type 1 Sociopath

We grow up opposing our parents only to become like them enough to oppose our children who behave as we once did—a reminder of how dreadful we were toward those now vindicated grandparents. And you...

A boy, if he’s lucky, discovers his limitations across a leisurely passage of years, with a self-awareness arriving slowly. That way, at least he has plenty of time to heroically imagine himself first. Most boys...

There has always been a sliver of panic in him, deeply buried, when it comes to his daughter: a fear that he is no good as a father, that he is doing everything wrong. That...

Culture was actually humanity’s attempt to extend the womb.

Every parent is an artist, but not every artist is apparent.

Was she insane?! She would lose her head before she was 20!

On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents’ eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from inside out.

People say that when a baby is crying the paternal grandmother will say, “The baby is crying, you should feed her,” and the maternal grandmother will say, “Why is that baby crying so much, making...

I was into third guesses with Theo and Maddy. Anyway, that’s one of the reasons I opted to buythe van and drive cross-country instead of dumping us all in a plane. It gave us some...

We can’t surrender to the culture. We’ve minimized the role of fathers, so we’ve created a generation of barbarians, children who become men without growing up. They stay in boyhood through their 20s and 30s,...

Throughout history, the most brutal cultures have always been distinguished by maternal-infant separation.

What was I waiting for with regards to the sea-soaked woman laughing in front of me? What would I tell myself if I didn’t watch her grow gorgeously ripe with our baby? If we didn’t...

I guess you just have to trust your kids, trust that their innate interest in life will win out in the end, don’t you think?

When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. ‘’I lost one, too,’’ they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn’t lost any children. I’m just a...

Shouldn’t we also ask ourselves what the consequences are of scrambling to provide the “most” of everything to our children in a world of fast dwindling resources?

Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging...

Her mother admonished through closed lips, the sound a mother can make mean anything from “pick up your socks” to “we are very disappointed you have murdered those orphans.

Mangarap ka at abutin mo ito. Wag mo sisihin ang sira mong pamilya, palpak mong syota, pilay mong tuta, o mga lumilipad na ipis…Kung may pagkukulang sayo ang mga magulang mo, pwede kang manisi at...

I don’t think it matters how many parents you’ve got, as long as those who are around make their presence a good one.

Emma, Emma, Emma,” I said, wishing I could somehow teach her to take the smaller blows of life in her stride.

At first parenthood was as I had expected, exhausting, sometimes heinous, and occasionally divine. I held my children close enough to feel them breathe, laugh, swallow.

He never had nothing of his own before, except the kid, and he can’t claim but half the credit, there, maybe less. T.J.’s blond like his mamma, and stubborn, too. Won’t let nobody hold him...

You´re my son, Ed. You might be idiotic and irresponsible, but it doesn´t make the slightest difference to what I feel for you. I´m pissed off that you could have thought it would

Worry not that your child listens to you; worry most that they watch you.

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

It takes a society to raise a generation.

Our children are only as brilliant as we allow them to be.

Many a night I woke to the murmer of paper and knew (Dad) was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James – oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like...

Confession: Having kids did not fix me. I was not somehow more whole, less botched-up, or more certain just because I had a kid… I was still me, with all my holes and problems and...

Mothers burning inside the risen suns of their children.

They (teenage boys)don’t really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation.

What a kid I got, I told him about the birds and the bees and he told me about the butcher and my wife.

On first hearing that little voice – as fine and friable, I felt, as cotton thread, the impact on my soul was that of the highest magnitude of earthquake, those that occur every hundred years,...

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.

Distrust won’t do good to you.But still if you ever do.Doubt you husband,Maybe doubt your wife.But never suspect,your kid’s father,or the mother of your child.

You raise them half-decent, and they grow up and leave. They move to Miami or California– someplace with gourmet groceries and nude beaches because you’ve reared them to cook good and be liberal minded. It’s...

If coupling should but make us whole / And of the selfsame mind and soul, / Then couple let’s in celebration; / We have contained the population.

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.

We made mistakes trying to correct mistakes. Isn’t that how we knew we were parents?

The mother was conflicted between what she knows that what’s possible.

The thing you do with a boy it is to show him all the to show. Don’t hold nothing back.

We are all the product of our past and have to live with our memories and personality they cannot be erased.

Mothering you is the first thing of consequence I have ever done.

If the world is so cruel you are frightened of it, I will hold you, and protect you, and teach it to love you as I already love you.

I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At...