If you worry less about what people think of you, you can pick up an astonishing amount of information about them. You no longer leave conversations wondering what just happened. Other people's minds and motives are finally revealed.

To be a different kind of parent, you don't just need a different parenting philosophy. You need a very different view of what a child actually is.

To grow up without risk is to risk not growing up.

There are no grown-ups....Everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently.

Your first attempt will be terrible.... Remember that everything great you see started out as someone else's bad first draft..... Whenever someone sends me a manuscript and says, 'It just flowed out of me,' I usually think: Let it flow back into you for a while.

The French believe that kids feel confident when they're able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don't praise them for saying just anything. They praise them for saying interesting things, and for speaking well.

The French aren't perfect, but they have some parenting secrets that really do work.