“You can't raise a child to believe the opposite of what you do.”

“You can't teach children to be good. The best you can do for your child is to live a good life yourself. What a parent knows and believes, the child will lean on.”

“The raising of a child is the building of a cathedral. You can't cut corners.”

“I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.”

“People can't concieve of a virtue in someone else that they can't coneive in themselves. Instead of believing you're stronger, it's so much easier to imagine you're weake. You're addicted to self-abuse. You're a liar. People are always ready to believe the opposite of what you tell them.”

“He [David Foster Wallace] compares raising children to raising books, you should take pride in the work you do inside a family and not from how they make out in the world. “It’s good to want a child to do well, but it’s bad to want that glory to reflect back on you,” is what he says.”