Somewhere slightly before or after the close of our second decade, we reach a momentous milestone--childhood's end. We have left asafe place and can't go home again. We have moved into a world where life isn't fair, where life is rarely what it should be.

Because we believe ourselves to be better parents than our parents, we expect to produce better children than they produced.

We have to divide mother love with our brothers and sisters. Our parents can help us cope with the loss of our dream of absolute love. But they cannot make us believe that we haven't lost it.

When he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an affair or lying dead in the street, I always hope he's dead.

For many men the denial of dependency on their mother is repeated in their subsequent relationships, sometimes by an absence of any sexual interest in women, sometimes by a pattern of loving and leaving them.

Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.