“When we acknowledge a child’s feelings, we do him a great service.”

You can call on each other / and count on each other … / because each other / is all you have.

And once he’s clear about that reality, he gathers the strength to begin to cope.

Let us be different in our homes.

Keeping our youth and yesterdays alive / Comrades with one history.

Let us realize that along with food, shelter, and clothing

We deprive them of the experience that comes from wrestling with their own problems.

The resentment that each child feels for the privileges of the other;

Deep inside you know / when trouble comes / and there’s no one else to turn to

No wonder they mobilize all their energy to have more or most. Or better still, all.

Add to that the envy that one child feels for the accomplishments of the other;

I was a wonderful parent before I had children.

From their verbal sparring they learn the difference between being clever and being hurtful.

The personal frustrations that they don’t dare let out on anyone else but a brother or sister,

I was an expert on why everyone else was having problems with theirs. Then I had three of my own.

From their endless rough-housing with each other, they develop speed and agility.

I was a wonderful parent before I had children.

If your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence.

I do think I have an ability to record sensual and emotional facts and factoids, to construct a convincing surface of what life feels like, both physical life and emotional life.

The Last Argument of Kings.

Wars–and what is war except crime on a mass scale?–destroy rather than produce.

You remember too much,” my mother said to me recently. “Why hold onto all that?” And I said, “where can I put it down?

A boy and a girl started dating after he backed his car into hers.

Lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

I thrive on that; I rise to the occasion of the circumstances.