“Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all.”

“is there a difference between being the midwife of truth, or the midwife of legends?”

“A midwife once told Erszébet of the üszögös gyermek, the stunted child, a premature fetus born alive, a scurrying spectral thing with a rat's feet and ears.Unless the stunted child is immediately destroyed, it will return to its mother's womb. It is something monstrous, grown in secret.”

“Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. . . . Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.”

“The listener is the midwife in the difficult birth of the word.”

“Yes, the essence of every love is a child, and it makes no difference at all whether it has ever actually been conceived or born. In the algebra of love a child is the symbol of the magical sum of two beings.”