If really good people who are deeply committed and who are thriving spiritually have to beat down the nature with which they seem to have been born and cut themselves off from the full realization of love, how can that be pleasing to God?

The tragedies that are being brought about vastly outweigh the benefits that are being achieved.

Parenthood always involves recognizing your child as separate and different from you.

I felt like all of the work was training for just one central idea: Accept your child for who he is. I'm not saying that I've done a brilliant job with that. But I've done my best.

Oppression breeds the power to oppose it.

If some glorious angel suddenly descended through my living room ceiling and offered to take away the children I have and give me other, better children — more polite, funnier, nicer, smarter — I would cling to the children I have and pray away that atrocious spectacle.

I'm not studying everything that can go wrong. What I'm studying is how much love there can be, even when everything appears to be going wrong.