Leila Slimani Quotes

I have two kids, and anyone who has a kid in order to feel loved is going to be in trouble because kids are first and foremost all about themselves. They'll say they love you, but 10 seconds later they'll turn on you.

It's terrifying, that unconditional love you have for a child. I still wonder if she really came from me, from my womb. It's a miracle. I don't understand it. I live it very intensely.

Motherhood is so sentimentalised and romanticised in our culture. It's practically against the law to say there are moments in the day when you hate your children. Everyone actually has those moments.

I have been married twice, and those were not the happiest times of my life. Part of the problem, quite frankly, is that when you get married, the romance disappears and the children arrive and the love is transferred. It shouldn't be that way, but too often it is transferred to the children.

I don't think people who have children are acting selfishly or unselfishly. Having a child who'll be loved, to parents who love each other, is the important thing.

Sometimes it's a bizarre, fairly cold, and horrifying thing to be a parent.

Parenthood and having kids puts you in touch with a whole other sort of sensitivity which is nothing but good. You feel more than you ever felt. You feel that vulnerability, but at the same time you wouldn't trade it for anything.

I remember when I was a little boy my father didn't love me; he couldn't. He loved my older brother but he couldn't love me somehow, at least not in a way I could understand it.

You have to love your children unselfishly. That's hard. But it's the only way.

There's love, and certainly children you care about more than yourself. But nevertheless, we're alone in our heads.

My mother had always taught me to write about my feelings instead of sharing really personal things with others, so I spent many evenings writing in my diary, eating everything in the kitchen and waiting for Mr. Wrong to call.

Until late in life, I was never quite good enough for my father, and I suppose that is part of what drives me even now, well after his death in 1992.

The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.

People ask about love. Real love. I was never in love; the people around me didn't love me. They were just along for the ride.

People always say you never know love until you have your own child and all of that is true.

My childhood was protected by love and a comfortable home. Yet, while still a very young child, I began instinctively to feel that there was something lacking, even in my own home, some false conception of family relations, some incomplete ideal.

If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.

I remember when my daughter, Marina, was born. The second I laid eyes on her, I was in love, and I had never felt that way before. I couldn't believe it.

You think you know what love is - until you have a child and discover that unconditional mother love.

Becoming a parent is always going to be a default setting. I truly believe there will always be more people who want to have children than who don't.

You're so in love with your children that you'd do anything for them; that's not necessarily the best thing.

I wasn't happy at all as a child. I was very privileged and knew extraordinary people, but I felt very lonely: my mother thought I was extremely difficult and my grandmother was extremely severe.

Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.

Americans, indeed, often seem to be so overwhelmed by their children that they'll do anything for them except stay married to the co-producer.

True adulthood occurs the moment we grasp that the people who raised us do not exist solely for our comfort and reassurance. From that point on, the steady stream of unconditional love and support we've expected from them all our lives has to flow both ways.