“What was happening here? He decided that children were what was happening here; that children served as a symbolic blemish, like a birthmark or obesity, which gave him a chance where previously there would have been none. Maybe children democratized beautiful single women.”

“GOd let women bear children so women would never give up hope. Even if here on earth women were denied everything else, God would always let them bear children. Children were a promise brighter than the rainbow.”

“I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.”

“But feel what happens in the soul when you imagine children saying to their parents, "What you gave me, first of all, wasn't the right thing, and secondly, it wasn't enough. You still owe me." What do children have from their parents when they feel that way? Nothing. And what do the parents have from their children? Also nothing. Such children cannot separate from their parents. Their accusations and demands tie them to their parents so that, although they are bound to their parents, the children have no parents. They then feel empty, needy and weak.This is the second Order of Love, that children take what their parents give in addition to life as it comes.”

“We are dealing here not with the dogmas of a church, but rather with events that for thousands of years have exercised the most powerful influence in the history of a living people. Jewish children were not taught: 'These are the things we Jews believe in', but 'These are the things that happened to us and made us what we are”

“Today women live long into their children's adult lives . . . too little is made of the pleasure we women feel in conversing with our grown children, and in allowing ourselves, from time to time, to think of them as friends. I have been fortunate in having children with whom conversation is possible; the sheerest pleasure here, for me, has been in meeting with them each alone . . . [p. 185]”