“Be good to the child and he will come to you tomorrow. - Unknown”

“Like a good harbor, the child therapist offers the besiegedc child physical shelter, tolerance of her defensive preoccupation, and a rare opportunity to let down her guard and rest. Just as a sinking hull must be righted and secured before more lasting repairs can be made, therapy can help a child enduringly heal only after she has been spared further abuse and neglect.”

“Given the considerable number of children who come to therapy begrudgingly, you might expect me to rejoice for those who come with bells on their toes. And sometimes I do. Experience has tempered my exuberance, however, since the speediest in are often also the speediest out. James, who had spent his second hour raving about his first, never came to the third or fourth. When a child too readily pleads for treatment every day or “forever,” I watch for signs of a premature desertion. The precipitant for quitting may be, not an underlying dislike of therapy, but the intolerable frustration over having so little of it.”

“Attachment begins early but grows slowly. There are no shortcuts. Verbal guarantees of safety or nurturance carry no more weight than those for hair-replacement systems and miracle slicers. A therapist must prove trustworthy over time. Only consistent experiential demonstrations, in times of both quietude and turbulence, convince the child. Though all children love to be wined and dined, the safety, understanding, warmth, and containment of therapy are what foster trust and ultimately seduce the child patient.”

“Not one of us gets all of the understanding we want, and few get as much as we need.”

“I was brought up to look upon falling in love as something natural...something that was pleasant and natural and amusing. I've been in love before, casually, the way young Frenchmen are...but in earnest, too, because a Frenchman can't help surrounding a thing like that with sentiment and romance. He can't help it. If it were just...just something shameful and nasty, he couldn't endure it. They don't have affairs in cold blood the way I've heard men talk about such things since I've come here. It makes a difference, Mrs. Pentland, if you look at things in the light they do. I've learned now, and it is a thing which needs learning, the most important thing in all life. The French are right about it. They make a fine, wonderful thing of love.”

“...she had come long ago to understand that loneliness was the curse of those who were free, even of all those who rose a little above the level of ordinary humanity.”