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"The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn."
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"I believed my story would be helpful to young women my daughter's age, who are still in the process of forming themselves as women, and in need of encouragement to remain true to themselves."
Woman
"It is not the task of a reader to please her subjects."
Reading
"Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love."
Age
"It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself."
Family
"Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power."
Power
"Not only did I avoid speaking of Salinger; I resisted thinking about him. I did not reread his letters to me. The experience had been too painful."
Experience
"Nothing like being visible, publishing one's work, and speaking openly about one's life, to disabuse the world of the illusion of one's perfection and purity."
Life
"I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story."
Narrative
"The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn."
Parenting
"I wonder what it is that the people who criticize me for telling this story truly object to: is it that I have dared to tell the story? Or that the story turns out not to be the one they wanted to hear?"
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"That we shall use every discovery of science in the preservation of our children's health goes without saying; but we shall do more than this - we shall give them a free start, not loading them up with our own ideas and experiences, nor advising them to live according to our lights. We were burned in the fire here and there, but - who knows? - fire may not burn our children, and if we warn them away from it they may end by never growing warm. We will not even inflict our cynicism on them as the sentimentality of our fathers was inflicted on us. The most we will do is urge a little doubt, asking that the doubt be exercised on our ideas as well as on all the mortal things in this world."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Tiffany jumped when she saw a balloon sail up above the trees, catch the wind, and swoop away, but it turned out to be just a balloon and not a lump of excess Brian. She could tell this because it was followed by a long scream of rage mixed with a roar of complaint: "AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON! which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this."
Author Name
Personal Development
"We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; it's safer to say you're a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you."
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Personal Development
"Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life."
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Personal Development
"Disciplining a child is easier than disciplining a grown person, and forgiving a child's insolence is easier than forgiving a grown person's impudence."
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Personal Development
"Don't box your children in and tell them that everything is a sin. You'll produce either rebels, or very boring people."
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Personal Development
"Every child gets a good mother, but not every mother gets a good child."
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Personal Development
"Parents' transmit their attitude towards education to children via soundless, aphonic messages."
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Personal Development
"Effective parenting requires being the grown up version of what you want your children to be. Why? Because example is the most compelling superpower."
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Personal Development
"Sometimes, kids want you to hurt the way they hurt."
Author Name
Personal Development
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