Augustus Y. Napier Quotes

All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves.

I think having children in general is always very helpful for acting.

I feel different. You know this many times over, because you are a parent, but it transforms you. It's this incredible experience where, in one way, you are still very much yourself, and in some ways you become even more connected to the rest of yourself. All of a sudden, you just get more connected to your child self, and your teenage self, and all these selves that you've maybe been abandoning at every date post that you pass.

Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wished we'd had.

Raising a child, whether or not it is yours, is like Nautilus of the heart and soul.

When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to claim.

My children, who are almost two: watching them develop has made me pay much closer attention to how we become who we are.

I think I'm a good father, but that's taken a lifetime of experience.

I know something about life and being a father and the worries and the fears of bringing up children.

Raising children is an enormously important part of life. I think one of the most important, or the most important, period.

You make sacrifices to become a mother, but you really find yourself and your soul.

Having kids sets a bomb off in your life. It really makes you examine who you are, what you believe in and what you want to be. And that is magical for creativity.

I am a good and interested mother - which has surprised me.

Being a mom kind of grounded me in a way. Your body takes on a whole new meaning.

Whatever I have not yet learned to tolerate in myself inevitably will appear in my children. In this way, they, like Julia, guide me to a new level of self-awareness and everyone benefits.

People say, When you have children, everything changes. But maybe things are awakened that were already there.

Something like a divorce does change you, but children change you more, and now I've had three.

As children, we think our mother has always been a mother, but it is just one of the roles you may have the opportunity to play. They don't define you as a human being.

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.

You don't know your child until they get here; you don't know their personality.

I think that parents grow up with an idea of what they want their kids to be like - and then their kids grow up to be people of themselves, of their own.

If you bungle raising your children, nothing else matters in life.

Parenthood is so wild in its ability to put a mirror directly in your face and force you to look at yourself long and hard. What a challenge this is, but also what an exhilarating gift.

One thing I really envy about my friends who have kids is that as their children develop, they're able to revisit their own developmental stages and recognise themselves and undo a lot of things they decided.

Parenting makes us better in so many regards.