We have to build the country that we want to see our future children and grandchildren live in.
You do not conceive a novel as easily as you conceive a child, nor even half as easily as you create nonfiction work. A journalist amasses facts, anecdotes and interviews with top brass. Enough of these add up to a book. A novelist demands quite different things. He has to find himself in his materials, to know for sure how he would feel and act and the events he writes about. In addition, he requires a catalyst — a person, idea, or emotion which coalesces his ingredients and makes them jell into a solid purpose.
The newer education put stress on culture ... Saturday mornings, the young were brushed and washed, forced into blue cheviot suits, and dragged to children's concerts to learn appreciation. They wriggled, squirmed, counted the light bulbs in the ceiling, dived under seats to gather ticket stubs, stampeded out at intermissions. The weakness of their bladders was astounding.
There are hours when I must force the novel out of my mind and be interested in the children.
You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.
I used to take that God's-eye view as a comfort when I was a child. I'd think, "Well, we couldn't find the world meaningful at all if it weren't for death." Of course, that is the smuggest and most intolerable of all perspectives because I'm not suffering from the death or the pain.
To me, these kind of everyday miseries act as a fatal disqualifier. My sunniest beliefs are basically contingent on the fact that my child is not dying of cancer right now.
First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a simple matter of what you will do when the chips are down, my friend. When the fat lady is singing. When the walls are falling in, and the sky is dark, and the ground is rumbling. In that moment our actions will define us. And it makes no difference whether you are being watched by Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whether you are not. On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can't. On both occasions, the man breathes.
This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.
I remember as a child listening to comedic musicals and thinking they were a real riot. I had pretty questionable taste in comedy.
Oh I love children, but I could never eat a whole one.
Whenever I'm feeling a bit down, I always visit the local children's hospital. Knowing that those cancer-kids wont be able to live long enough to surpass me in fame just warms my heart, you know?
I never go looking for child pornography, but I mean, if somebody sends me an email with some pictures, I'm not going to turn around and report them.
A child's death is really of less value than an adult's. I mean, what could you really accomplish in a year? Not much, and that's not even talking about, you know, pay-wise.
I know that [Mike] Tyson talked about wanting to eat his opponent's children, but I don't think he ever had the balls to do it. I'm different - when I kidnapped Bill Lawrence's daughter, I cut off all of her fingers before sending my demands so that I wouldn't have to sit there and wait for him to ignore them. We worked things about about nine hours in, which is good because I ate her thumb as a midnight snack.
I think that paying your bills every month, that's not so glamorous or fun, having a job, or when your child gets sick. That's why when there are those special things, they are even more important and you want them to have a purpose.
When children are immunized, it's really the beginning of a new day for them.
When I was a child it was very clear what I was allowed to see and what I was not allowed to see and there was no discussion or option or negotiation. Whatever my mom said, that's what went down.
A society of children first is a society that nurtures smiling faces in everyone.
Even members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children.
I realized that an artist seeking to tell the truth in her art takes great courage. I recognize the courage required to bring children together from Israeli and Palestinian communities to find commonality in music as a very powerful and effective beginning towards Peace.
Sometimes the father feels pushed out because of the connection between the mother and the child.
When I hear music, my body just starts to move. It has nothing to do with training or anything. That's just me. That's just my body. And I was like that as a child, too.
On 11 September, I was living in Greenwich Village, New York; my children learned to tell south from north by looking at the World Trade Center.
