“We should invest in kids like these," we're told, "because it will be more expensive not to." Why do our natural compassion and religious inclinations need to find a surrogate in dollar savings to be voiced or acted on? Why not give these kids the best we have because we are a wealthy nation and they are children and deserve to have some fun while they are still less than four feet high?”

“Why is everyone being all quiet?" the Kid asks. "Are we having a staring contest? If so, you should have told me because I wasn't quite ready yet.”

“Sometimes kids just act impulsively, but it's because we have strong feelings, not because we're trying to make trouble.”

“Being childfree does not mean we don't like children; it means we don't care to have children of our own. We just want people to accept that: It's okay to be different, and not everyone has to have kids to be fulfilled. I do know some people get so much joy out of their kids. I see it in my friends who have kids. And I don't envy that, because I feel like I have so much joy in my own life. I appreciate theirs, and more power to them, but we have our own. This is our way of having joy.”

“And nothing inspires as much shame as being a parent. Children confront us with our paradoxes and hypocrisies, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why — Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? — and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn’t true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood — which is a good shame — is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers.”

“Why should we all act so like children? Because we are? Yes, I suppose so." She made a humorous grimace. "But even then, why?" She pondered this for some time. "I suppose it was worth while-all those things I made-in a way," she mused, "and I suppose I wouldn't have made them, otherwise." She looked doubtful. "Is that it? So we will do the things that would not seem worth while-if we stopped to think?"...Yes, that was it!”