“Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.”

“People can read books and watch children at the same time . . . Of course, both the reading of the books and the watching of the children will be performed in a way best described as half-assed. If you want to read your book in a non-half-assed way, you have to wait until your child is in kindergarten, or you must pay someone to watch your child while you read your book. Even then, however, you must not read the book in your home because the child will find you and jump on you and make reading impossible. You must leave your home, leave your yard, leave your street. You must drive to a cafe in town to read your book. You must run and hide from your child as if your child is serving you a subpoena. This is not insane. It does not make you bad if you do this.”

“You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.”

“You can't teach children to be good. The best you can do for your child is to live a good life yourself. What a parent knows and believes, the child will lean on.”

“Women without children are also the best of mothers,often, with the patience,interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot always sustain. I come to crave our talk and our daughters gain precious aunts. Women who are not mothering their own children have the clarity and focus to see deeply into the character of children webbed by family. A child is fortuante who feels witnessed as a peron,outside relationships with parents by another adult.”

“When the number of children goes over one, God becomes miserly in granting intelligence; he takes it from the living child and gives it to the child to be born.”