“I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.”

“I’m an only child, so logically I gave birth to my parents, because if it weren’t for me they wouldn’t be parents at all, they’d simply be a married couple. (Or maybe without me they wouldn’t even have been married!)
”

“Yet the French have managed to be involved without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there's no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents." one Parisian mother tells me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time.”

“Jimmy nods. Being with him like this, without the attitude and looking at me with complete trust, almost makes me understand why parents would go through the trouble of dealing with all of the bullshit of having kids. Then I remember how he told me I smelled like cat pee, and the moment passes.”

“If you have one parent who loves you, even if they can't buy you clothes, they're so poor and they make all kinds of mistakes and maybe sometimes they even give you awful advice, but never for one moment do you doubt their love for you--if you have this, you have incredibly good fortune.If you have two parents who love you? You have won life's Lotto.If you do not have parents, or if the parents you have are so broken and so, frankly, terrible that they are no improvement over nothing, this is fine.It's not ideal because it's harder without adults who love you more than they love themselves. But harder is just harder, that's all.”

“My father quoted Shakespeare to me often and when I lay a book down with splayed pages he told me better to be cruel to animals, children even, but never so cruelly treat a book.”