Illness is the proving ground of friendship.

In the supposedly enlightened eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, parental indifference, child neglect, and raw cruelty appearedamong Europeans of all classes.... In mid-nineteenth- century France, families abandoned their children at the rate of thirty-three thousand a year.... It took sixty years after the criminalization of cruelty to animals for cruelty to children to be made punishable under English law.... Industrialized America added brutalizing child labor to the oppressions of the young.

Before devising any blueprint that includes the assumption of Having It All, we need to ask ... Why do we need Everything?

A family stitched together with love seldom unravels.

Friends can be said to "fall in like" with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love.

I used to anticipate my childhood birthday parties as if each were an annual coronation. Like most kids, I loved sitting at the head of the table with a crown on my head.

I find it profoundly symbolic that I am appearing before a committee of fifteen men who will report to a legislative body of one hundred men because of a decision handed down by a court comprised of nine men--on an issue that affects millions of women.... I have the feeling that if men could get pregnant, we wouldn't be struggling for this legislation. If men could get pregnant, maternity benefits would be as sacrosanct as the G.I. Bill.