It is only when parental feelings are ineffective or too ambivalent or when the mother's emotions are temporarily engaged elsewhere that children feel lost.

Sex is something you do. Sexuality is something you are.

We are imprisoned in the realm of life, like a sailor on his tiny boat, on an infinite ocean.

Create around one at least a small circle where matters are arranged as one wants them to be.

What I have always wanted for myself is much more primitive. It is probably nothing more than the affection of the people with whom I am in contact, and their good opinion of me.

Papa continually emphasizes how much remains unexplained. With the other psychoanalytic writers, everything is always so known and fixed.

Papa always makes it clear that he would like to know me as much more rational and lucid than the girls and women he gets to know during his analytic hours.