“The child comes home and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be, hasn’t got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It’s not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. I am merely pointing to something which is different from love but which sometimes goes by the name of love. It may well be that without this thing which I am talking about there would not be any love. But this thing in itself is not love. It is just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man. It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation. When you got born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a hame trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can’t get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.”

“When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.”

“It turned out this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And she said gently-that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.”

“He still went out nearly every night. I thought, is this what he's going to do when we have the baby? Have I made another terrible mistake with a man? You don't really know a man until you have a child with him. Then you see so much. Is he kind? Is he tolerant? Is he loving? Or is he immature and egotistical and selfish? When you have a child, it can go two ways with your husband: You love him even more, or you lose all respect for him. And if you lose respect, there's no way to get it back...”

“Here I am going to say something which may come as a bit of a shock. God doesn't necessarily want us to be happy. He wants us to be lovable. Worthy of love. Able to be loved by Him. We don't start off being all that lovable, if we're honest. What makes people hard to love? Isn't it what is commonly called selfishness? Selfish people are hard to love because so little love comes out of them.”

“You know the one about the old man whose grandson is getting married? Just before the wedding, he calls the boy in for a chat. “My child,” he says, “I want you to know that all marriages go through phases. At first, you and you wife will make love all the time. But then, as the children come along, you will find that you are having sex less and less. And by the time they are grown and gone, you’ll be just like your grandmother and me. All you’ll ever have is oral sex. I just wanted you to know how things will go.” The boy looks at him, incredulous. “You and Grandma have oral sex?” “Every single night,” the old man says, “and it’s a perfectly natural thing. She goes into her bedroom and calls, ‘Fuck you!’ And I go into my bedroom and call back to her, ‘No, fuck you!”