Society chooses to disregard the mistreatment of children, judging it to be altogether normal because it is so commonplace.

Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.

The victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it.

Child abuse is still sanctioned — indeed, held in high regard — in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions from how they were treated by their own parents.

We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.

All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection

For the human soul is virtually indestructible, and its ability to rise from the ashes remains as long as the body draws breath.