It's only too easy to idealise a mother's job. We know well that every job has its frustrations and its boring routines and its times of being the last thing anyone would choose to do. Well, why shouldn't the care of babies and children be thought of that way too?

Feeling real is more than existing; it is finding a way to exist as oneself... and to have a self into which to retreat for relaxation.

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.

If mothers are told to do this or that or the other,... they lose touch with their own ability to act.... Only too easily they feel incompetent. If they must look up everything in a book, they are always too late even when they do the right things, because the right things have to be done immediately. It is only possible to act at exactly the right point when the action is intuitive or by instinct, as we say. The mind can be brought to bear on the problem afterwards.

The fact that grief takes so long to resolve is not a sign of inadequacy, but betokens depth of soul.

It is in playing, and perhaps only in playing, that the child is free to be creative.