Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

You learn a lot though when you have kids, I'll tell you what. Did you know when a baby poops its diapers, you're not supposed to hit him with a rolled-up newspaper?

I'm amazed when I see mothers wearing high heels. If your kids run off you can't run after them.

Do your kids a favor - don't have any.

Having kids, you can't function with a hangover.

Miami is not optimal for raising a child.

Kids don't come with instruction manuals. It's interesting, but after you have your kids, it's a blessing. It's not as hard as people may think it is.

My mum says part of the reason we moved house, it was a rough area at the time, was down to that - they wanted to help me.

As a parent, you worry about kids' safety and the world they're living in.

I must have been a really tough kid to corral. I got disciplined quite frequently. I guess that would be the best way to say it. The rod, I wore out the rod. You know, Spare the rod and spoil the child? Well, I wore out the rod.

I'd love to have three or four kids. But my mom always says: "Speak to me after you have your first".

I think you lose your innocence when you have kids, because the world suddenly becomes a much more dangerous place.

As much as we teach our kids, the process teaches us. If we're being diligent, we're learning from our strengths as parents, but also from the mistakes that we make.

Any mother with half a skull knows that when Daddy's little boy becomes Mommy's little boy, the kid is so wet he's treading water.

Real life, raising kids and trying to raise them to be good people takes a lot of work. It's all about (appearing) effortless, yet there's so much effort. You do it the best you can.

The moment you have kids, you are prey to judgment, but you also become a judge. You find yourself going, "Can you believe what she did with such-and-such?" at school.

I figure if the kids are alive at the end of the day, I've done my job.

The idea was to focus on the primal drama of parenthood: the way from moment to moment you swing from comforter to tormentor, just as kids simultaneously light up our lives and drive us nuts. I was trying to capture that strange, bipolar quality of parenthood. For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have.

I had four children. And my youngest when we started was like, oh, gosh, 2 or a little less. And sometimes my kids would say to me, you know, how come you don't scream at those kids on television like you do us?

As complicated as joint custody is, it allows the delicious contradiction of having children and maintaining the intimacy of life-before-kid s.

Keeping kids safe is sometimes a delusion. The world is a perilous place. Sometimes the kitchen is a perilous place.

I've always worked really hard, and the hardest thing I've ever done is have kids!

It’s funny – my married friends tell me all the time, 'What you have is so much easier.' When you’re doing it on your own, you don't have to [argue over] how you're raising the kids.

I think part of being a parent is trying to kill your kids.

Parenting is a constant struggle between making your kids life better and ruining your own.

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids, in fact it's cold as hell.