"The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found."

"Your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life."

"The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and torturous."

"This is part of the essence of motherhood, watching your kid grow into her own person and not being able to do anything about it. Otherwise children would be nothing more than pets."

"The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children."

"Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore."

"A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life."

"How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers' names."

"The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children."

"Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them. My mother cleans them."