“When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.”

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.

Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.

Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.

How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?

Some emotions don’t make a lot of noise. It’s hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint – like a heartbeat. And pure love – why, some days it’s so quiet, you don’t even know it’s there.

Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted. Every evening they disappear. Most parents never imagine how hard they try to please us, and how miserable they feel when they think they have failed.

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn’t even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.

When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.

I read one psychologist’s theory that said, “Never strike a child in your anger.” When could I strike him? When he is kissing me on my birthday? When he’s recuperating from measles? Do I slap the Bible out of his hand on Sunday?

Children make your life important.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.

It is ludicrous to read the microwave direction on the boxes of food you buy, as each one will have a disclaimer: THIS WILL VARY WITH YOUR MICROWAVE. Loosely translated, this means, You’re on your own, Bernice.

Women are never what they seem to be. There is the woman you see and there is the woman who is hidden. Buy the gift for the woman who is hidden.

Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.

What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?

Every door of racial prejudice I can kick down, is one less door that my children have to kick down.

I tried to allow my children to take risks, to test themselves. Better broken bones than broken spirit.

Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.

I’ve been writing since I was maybe seven.

I am all about new beginnings. A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new email account. Why not a new relationship with the press?