“...she knew in her heart that nature has a preference for a particular order: parents die, then children die. But it was a harsh design, offering little relief from pain, for being in accord with it means that the fortunate find themselves orphaned.”

“What if she stepped on a needle and it went right into her foot and Roberta would not feel it and the needle would rise and rise and rise through the veins leading up to the heart and then the needle would STAB HER IN THE HEART and Roberta would DIE and it would be VERY PAINFUL this according to nurse mother a medical expert on Freaky Ways to Croak... The mother shouted that she knew several people who died from the Rising Stab of the Unfelt Needle or RSUN she has seen cases of it many times and not ONE PERSON HAS SURVIVED IT.”

“Does a soldier go to war in order to kill the enemy? no, he goes in order to die for his country.Does a wife want to show her husband how happy she is? no, she wants him to see how she suffers in order to make him happyDoes the husband go to work thinking he will find personal fulfillment there? no, he is giving his sweat and tears for the good of the familyAnd so it goes on: sons give up their dreams to please their parents, parents give up their lives in order to please their children; pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only LOVE..”

“If little labour, little are our gains:Man's fortunes are according to his pains.”

“Clary knew what made the parents around her cry, more or less openly: that everything must grow and change and--rather than being set free--must die, all these children too. We die, they will die, their children will be dead. We resist mourning, because we know we will have to mourn soon enough, and the resistance makes us weep.”

“Parents with dependents are somehow thought to count for more. If, for example, there is some scarce resource—a donor kidney perhaps—and of the two potential recipients one is a parent of young children and one is not, the parent, all things being equal, will likely be favoured. To let a parent die is not only to thwart that person’s preference to be saved, but also the preferences of his or her children that their parent be saved. It is quite true, of course, that the death of the parent will harm more people, but there is nonetheless something to be said against favouring parents. Increasing one’s value by having children might be like increasing one’s value by taking hostages.”