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"I do not know many people who think they have succeeded as parents. Those who do tend to cite the markers that indicate (their own) status in the world: the Stanford degree....Those of us less inclined to compliment ourselves on our parenting skills, in other words most of us, recite rosaries of our failures, our neglects, our derelictions and delinquencies."
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"There was a danger in asking too much of a child, but the danger of asking too little was almost equal."
"Our greatest duty to our children is to love them first. Secondly, it is to teach them. Not to frighten, force, or intimidate our children into submission, but to effectively teach them so that they have the knowledge and tools to govern themselves."
"When you discipline a child you prepare them for a responsible and accountable adulthood."
"A parents wishes for their children shouldn't be to be as good as them but to surpass their own abilities and hopefully lead to a better world."
"Motherhood isn't just about making babies, it's about making lives and molding destinies."
"I ...understand how a parent might hit a child- it's because you can look into their eyes and see a reflection of yourself that you wish you hadn't."
"When my son Nick was five years old, he was sitting at the kitchen bar while I prepared dinner. In typical busy mother fashion, I was multitasking-cooking, cleaning, running the laundry, answering the phone, and attempting to listen to what he had to say."
"If you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won't need you anymore. If you did it properly, they go away."
"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."
Explore more quotes by Joan Didion
"The child trying not to appear as a child, of the strenuousness with which she tried to present the face of a convincing adult."
"He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them."
"It kills me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento."
"I invent a reason for the Hertz attendant to start the rental car.I am seventy-five years old: this is not the reason I give."
"Carter and Helene still ask questions. I used to ask questions, and I got the answer: nothing. The answer is 'nothing."
"Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it."
"It did not occur to me to call a doctor, because I knew none, and although it did occur to me to call the desk and ask that the air conditioner be turned off, I never called, because I did not know how much to tip whoever might come-was anyone ever so young?"
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