It is true that the present is powerfully shaped by the past. But it is also true that ... insight at any age keeps us from singing the same sad songs again.

Friends broaden our horizons. They serve as new models with whom we can identify. They allow us to be ourselves-and accept us that way. They enhance our self-esteem because they think we're okay, because we matter to them. And because they matter to us-for various reasons, at various levels of intensity-they enrich the quality of our emotional life.

If his mother was drowning and I was drowning and he had to choose one of us to save, He says he'd save me.

We grow because the clamorous, permanent presence of our children forces us to put their needs before ours. We grow because our love for our children urges us to change as nothing else in our lives has the power to do. We grow (if we're willing to grow, that is: not every parent is willing) because being a parent helps us stop being a child.

Living with golden fantasies of an endlessly nurtured infancy can be a neurotic refusal to grow up.

the lives we lead are determined, for better and worse, by our loss experiences.

I could be such a wonderful wife to another wife's husband.