Elizabeth McCracken Quotes

The abduction of a child is a tragedy. No one can fully understand or appreciate what a parent goes through at such a time, unless they have faced a similar tragedy. Every parent responds differently. Each parent copes with this nightmare in the best way he or she knows how.

A child is owed the greatest respect; if you have ever have something disgraceful in mind, don't ignore your son's tender years.

I loved and protected my own children like a fierce mama bear, but one of them died anyway. It was a dark day when I realized that part of my responsibility in Casey's death was that I did not love all the children of the world in that same real, not abstract, way.

I don't want him to hurt himself. I don't want him to choke on something. You're just so concerned for them, and it hurts you. It's so alarming, man. I feel it for the people around me, but it's deeper for my son. Only a parent would understand.

I look for the safety of my child. I don't really care about me.

Spanish children are too often ill-cared for, but despite the abuses of ignorant motherhood and fatherhood, such vivid, vivacious, bewitching little people as they are!

To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

I really feel like it's a travesty to make a child famous. I really do.

The parents' job is to be there for their kids, not the other way round. Troubles between parents need to be talked through with friends and not visited on the children.

The love you have for your kids is so overwhelmingly powerful that it alters your perspective. The dark things going on in the world become very poignant and vivid.

I sort of locked into the idea that if I could be the perfect son to both of my parents, well maybe that would be enough to keep them together. And ultimately, obviously, it wasn't. Regardless of what I tried to do. That was a lesson about limitations.

Good words will not give me back my children.

I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic.

He loved them and cared for them, and you don't kill kids that you love and care for.

My kids are my life and the thought of someone taking them away from me is my worst nightmare.

Parenthood, like death, is an event for which it is nearly impossible to be prepared. It brings you into a new relationship with the fact of your own existence, a relationship in which one may be rendered helpless.

When a parent loses a child, there is no greater pain.

I think any parent, at some time or other, has thoughts of their child dying. That's probably one of the worst things that could ever happen to a parent.

On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts.

It's not getting any better, is it? I don't want my 19-year-old boy going into the army. I love these little kids. They understand how passionate I am.

The importance of human life should be universally respected - and that refers to children before they are born and after. All children have the right to be brought up in a loving two-parent family where the notion of divorce is not even possible.

I expected it to be overwhelming and all-encompassing, but having a kid brings you into the world in a whole different way.

Losing my parents was the most crushing thing that ever happened to me. I lost my dad when I was 26, and it changed my life entirely.

There may be illegitimate parents but there are no illegitimate children.

I told him that Mrs. Carter and I would be deeply hurt and shocked and disappointed—because our daughter is only seven years old.