Lifestyles and sex roles are passed from parents to children as inexorably as blue eyes or small feet.

If knowledge is power, clandestine knowledge is power squared; it can be withheld, exchanged, and leveraged.

When a family is free of abuse and oppression, it can be the place where we share our deepest secrets and stand the most exposed, a place where we learn to feel distinct without being better, - and sacrifice for others without losing ourselves.

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

Control is a big issue when you're sick. It's the first thing you lose - other losses come later.

If the Richter scale could measure human calamities, the loss of a child would register a ten.

Compared to other parents, remarried parents seem more desirous of their child's approval, more alert to the child's emotional state, and more sensitive in their parent-child relations. Perhaps this is the result of heightened empathy for the child's suffering, perhaps it is a guilt reaction; in either case, it gives the child a potent weapon--the power to disrupt the new household and come between parent and the new spouse.