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

The closest friends I made all through life have been people who also grew up close to a loved and loving grandmother or grandfather.

Women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.

...recognize and respect Earth's beautiful systems of balance, between the presence of animals on land, the fish in the sea, birds in the air, mankind, water, air, and land. Most importantly there must always be awareness of the actions by people that can disturb this precious balance.

I discovered when I had a child of my own that I had become a biased observer of small children. Instead of looking at them with affectionate but nonpartisan eyes, I saw each of them as older or younger, bigger or smaller, more or less graceful, intelligent, or skilled than my own child.

In this country, some people start being miserable about growing old while they are still young.

The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society.