The father who raises a son to have a profession he once dreamed of, and the mother who uses her daughter as the adult companion her husband is not; the parents who urge their children into accomplishments as status symbols-all these and many more are ways of subordinating a child's authentic self to a parent s needs.

It's especially ridiculous to think you have to be successful when you're so young. You should be able to adventure and not worry so much about achievement.

I no longer believe the conservative message that children are naturally selfish and destructive creatures who need civilizing by hierarchies or painful controls. On the contrary, I believe that hierarchy and painful controls create destructive people. And I no longer believe the liberal message that children are blank slates on which society can write anything. On the contrary, I believe a unique core self is born into every human being; the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again.

I do not like to write - I like to have written.

People are quite clear in viewing nuns as the servants and the teachers and the supporters of the poor. You contrast that with the fact that the Vatican did virtually nothing about long-known pedophiles, and it's just too much.

A person who has experienced something is almost always far more expert on it than are the experts.

I'm clearly not frightened of flying because I fly all the time, but every once in a while I do, as we all do, think, What if this plane goes down? And I think, Well, if I'm holding the hand of the person sitting next to me, then I'm holding everyone's hand.