“Grandparents are given a second chance to enjoy parenthood with fewer of its tribulations and anxieties.”

What the world needs is not romantic lovers who are sufficient unto themselves, but husbands and wives who live in communities, relate to other people, carry on useful work and willingly give time and attention to their children.

The assumption that men were created equal, with an equal ability to make an effort and win an earthly reward, although denied every day by experience, is maintained every day by our folklore and our daydreams.

No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.

A woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.

And when our baby stirs and struggles to be born it compels humility: what we began is now its own.

Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression. Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humour, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man

Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.

The anonymity of the city is one of its strengths as well as – carried too far – one of its weaknesses.

Pigs and cows and chickens and people are all competing for grain.

Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.

There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a postmenopausal woman.

I think rigid heterosexuality is a perversion of nature.

What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.

Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read. It merely records the degree of the lover’s insecurity.

Anxiety is our agitated soul scrambling for control.

Three enemies of personal peace: regret over yesterday’s mistakes, anxiety over tomorrow’s problems, and ingratitude for today’s blessings.

If you didn’t have anxiety, then you wouldn’t have passion for anything. The reason we have anxiety is because you care and you’re thoughtful.

There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it.

The art to breathe and smile despite the pressure of anxiety, takes courage and power, keep appreciating yourself.

I’ve spent most of my life not understanding that my anxiety was causing a downward spiral, self-medicating, and self-sabotage.

Choosing to live with less stuff is choosing to live with less stress and less anxiety.  

My anxious self always melted in your arms, then. Now your grin from another screen telling me “its going to be okay” works just the same.