Andrew Solomon Quotes

Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination. But just as a muscle grows flabby with disuse, so the bright imagination of a child pales in later years if he ceases to exercise it.

At the end of the day, I'm Violet's mom, and I want the best for her.

You have to empathize with your children. If you love them, you never really get too angry with them when they make a mistake, because kids are expected to make mistakes. Having children, you start to see yourself through them.

The greatest gift a parent can give a child is unconditional love. As a child wanders and strays, finding his bearings, he needs a sense of absolute love from a parent. There's nothing wrong with tough love, as long as the love is unconditional.

When we choose to be parents, we accept another human being as part of ourselves, and a large part of our emotional selves will stay with that person as long as we live. From that time on, there will be another person on this earth whose orbit around us will affect us as surely as the moon affects the tides, and affect us in some ways more deeply than anyone else can. Our children are extensions of ourselves.

If I cannot give my children a perfect mother I can at least give them more of the one they've got--and make that one more loving. I will be available. I will take time to listen, time to play, time to be home when they arrive from school, time to counsel and encouerage.

Above all else, children need to know and feel they are loved, wanted, and appreciated. They need to be assured of that often. Obviously, this is a role parents should fill, and most often the mother can do it best.

The thing you can do better than anyone else is love your children, because they're your children.

Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger the whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee in our children's faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult; we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do. Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination.

It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have...One pair that see through closed doors. Another in the back of her head...and, of course, the ones in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and reflect 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word.

I walked away from this movie thinking how important it is to have a genuine selfless love for your children. You can really mess kids up if you don't have the right kind of love for them.

No child should be permitted to grow up without exercise for imagination. It enriches life for him. It makes things wonderful and beautiful.

Love is the very essence of family life. Why is it that the children we love become so frequently the targets of our harsh words? Why is it that these children who love their fathers and mothers sometimes speak as if with daggers that cut to the quick? "There is beauty all around," only when there's love at home.

It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.

If someone criticizes my child it's gonna hurt me a little bit, but it's my child, you know, and I love it regardless.

I always wanted children, but not until they were actually part of my life did I realize that I could love that fiercely, or get that angry.

When your kids accomplish something it means much more than anything you've done.

Your children are not your children. They are lives longing for itself. They come here with their own destiny. Give them your love. They will find their own way.

The greatest gift you and your partner can give your children is the example of an intimate, healthy, and loving relationship.

The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child.

So much of parenting is following your instincts, and taking the time to actually know your child.

This mother needs happy, reputable children, and that one needs unhappy ones: otherwise she cannot show her kindness as a mother.

Time and experience have taught me a priceless lesson: Any child you take for your own becomes your own if you give of yourself to that child. I have born two children and had seven others by adoption, and they are all my children, equally beloved and precious.

I'm providing myself to my children. I'm loving them unconditionally, accepting them unconditionally.