Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

You can't live like a monk if you have two five-year-old twins. That ain't happening. Just the opposite, actually.

Before I married, I had three theories about raising children and no children. Now, I have three children and no theories.

I mean, the human race wouldn't continue if anyone told you how hard it is having kids, would it?

Raising children is like making biscuits: it is as easy to raise a big batch as one, while you have your hands in the dough.

Parenthood is the opiate of the masses.

With young kids (I have four including the newborn) times passes weirdly for me.

Rearing a family is probably the most difficult job in the world. It resembles two business firms merging their respective resources to make a single product. All the potential headaches of that operation are present when an adult male and an adult female join to steer a child from infancy to adulthood.

Being in a marriage and having children is the greatest pleasure, but it is certainly not the easiest pleasure. It is not like eating ice cream.

Unfortunately, daily routine is the last thing I have with all three kids, family life, work, foundation, and the amount of travel that I do! So truly, what I try to do to keep myself centered is take breaths in between and before I start a new thing throughout the day.

I'm a mother of three children, and we do make mistakes.

I do think that the role of the Internet, and the way it's bringing everything into the home, has made a parent's job much more difficult. And it's harder to know what to do and how to do it. It's much, much harder.

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

People often ask me, "What's the difference between couplehood and babyhood?" In a word? Moisture. Everything in my life is now more moist. Between your spittle, your diapers, your spit-up and drool, you got your baby food, your wipes, your formula, your leaky bottles, sweaty baby backs, and numerous other untraceable sources-all creating an ever-present moistness in my life, which heretofore was mainly dry.

Your kids grow up. I think they more than anything are making me feel as if, you know, you want to squeeze everything you got every single day out of this thing. Because it passes quick.

Life is too short to waste time changing the sheets every week. Especially when you have small children who tend to wait until you change the sheets to then wet the sheets.

My day is pretty much busy. I do 15 million things in the course of a day. I'm holding up I think. I don't know how I look, but I think I'm holding up.

The more I keep myself occupied and jump from thing to thing, the more I think it enriches both.

You think my kids just popped out of the ground?

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

I would like to have children while I've still got the energy. But then I have the feeling that when I have children I'll stop performing in the same way, because you don't really need to perform if you have children.

Having and raising children is doing something with your life! ... And I have to say that having your kids is one of the greatest things you can do.

Don't think to hunt two hares with one dog.

Parenting is the easiest job to get - you just have to screw up once and it's yours.

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?

Having kids has been a fantastic thing for me. It's meant that I'm a little more balanced. In my twenties I worked massively, hardly took vacation at all. Now, I, with the help of my wife, I'm always making sure I've got a good balance of how I spend my time.