Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law.

Mourning has become unfashionable in the United States. The bereaved are supposed to pull themselves together as quickly as possible and to reweave the torn fabric of life. ... we do not allow ... for the weeks and months during which a loss is realized - a beautiful word that suggests the transmutation of the strange into something that is one's own.

I suddenly realized that through no act of my own I had become biologically related to a new human being.

There is no more creative force in the world than the menopausal woman with zest.

Where we choose to put our attention changes our brain, which in time can change how we see and interact with the world.

Through a grandmother's voice and hands the end of life is known at the beginning.

The institution of marriage in all societies is a pattern within which the strains put by civilization on males and females alike must be resolved, a pattern within which men must learn, in return for a variety of elaborate rewards, new forms in which sexual spontaneity is still possible, and women must learn to discipline their receptivity to a thousand other considerations.