William Landay Quotes

when we are young our parents run our life; when we get older, our children do.

Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.

All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.

It was quite instant that he wanted Harry's approval. Did you notice that? And the children sort of rescued him this time. It's a great turnabout. That's what happens as your children get older. They do things for you, and it's quite shocking when they do.

Parents have too little respect for their children, just as the children have too much for the parents.

The young need old men. They need men who are not ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves. ... Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.

For me, as much about being a parent as it is about being a child.

Because I see my own boys growing, and I see other children growing and I just have such a connection.

As I get older, all sorts of things become less funny. Once one has children, any cruelty involving children becomes far less amusing than when one was at the mercy of one's friends' and relatives' children.

Brielle is my first born; I had her so young that we basically grew up together!

No adult can bear a child’s burden or grow up in his stead.

When you have a child yourself, you go back and think about how you were parented, how you were mothered and what your parents did for you, and you just want to be able to call and ask them.

I used to be a child. It came naturally to me. I was an adult for a time, too. That came less naturally.

The first service a child doth his father is to make him foolish.

I was an adult when I was supposed to be a kid. So now I'm an adult and I'm acting like a kid.

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

And a great misunderstanding is that children think their parents are grown-up, and parents feel obliged to act as if they were.

You’re always a kid around your parents… Unless they’re acting like children. Then you don’t get the chance.

The children of childish parents age quickly.

Has it ever occurred to you that parents are nothing but overgrown kids until their children drag them into adulthood? Usually kicking and screaming?

In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.

Your mother calls and says she hasn't seen you for a long time. The first year: You invite her for a week. You give her your room, and you both sleep on the lumpy studio couch. The fifth year: Your mother sleeps on the lumpy studio couch. The tenth year: You send the children to mother.

It's a little known fact, but parents are like superheroes. With just a few magic words they can make you feel ten feet tall and bulletproof, they can slay the dragons of doubt and worry, they can make your problems disappear. But of course they can only do this as long as you're a child. When you've become an adult, become the master of your own universe, they're not as powerful as they once were. Maybe that's why so many of us take our time growing up.

Childhood is for spoiling adulthood.

If parents would only realize how they bore their children.