It's not enough just to be a mother. It's not only the social pressure on mothers by certain kinds of feminism and other sources. There is also economic pressure on them.

Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.

What I try to point out is the role an ordinary person can have in seeing the child's destiny. You have to have a feeling for the child.

Vessels expose the invisible Zeitgeist, the visible formed by the invisible.

In the past, friendship was a huge thing. But it's hard for us to think of friendship as a calling, because it's not a vocation.

If you are still being hurt by an event that happened to you at twelve, it is the thought that is hurting you now.

How can Hitler, or some other murderer, appear in this world? I don't think any single theory can account for the phenomenon, and I think it's a mistake to try to reduce it to being brutalized by your parents or having grown up in some horrible situation - like Charles Manson.