I just want my family to be safe. Because I am sometimes polarizing, I fear for their safety.
It's one thing to say you're for the war; it's another thing to send your kid to war - your daughter or your son.
My life, like most people's, has been negatively affected by cancer, and the thought of my young children living in an age where this is no longer humanity's No. 1 health fear was simply overpowering.
Mum and Dad died of heart problems, my grandparents died of it, my sister has had mini strokes, my brother has had a heart attack - it's genetic; there's nothing I can do.
If something was to happen to part of my family, I don't know what I'd do.
Never refuse an assignment except when there is a conflict of interest, a potential of danger to you or your family, or you hold a strongly biased attitude about the subject under focus.
I told them," he said in a clear, carrying voice, "that they should not give someone as old and powerful as I a daughter to love. That it would end badly.
As a parent my greatest fear is always anything that endangers my children.
A bridge shouldn't just fall down in the middle of America. Not a bridge that's a few blocks from my house. Not an eight-lane highway. Not a bridge that I drive over with my family every day, along with tens of thousands of Minnesotans. But that's what happened.
Everybody is vulnerable through love of their children. Hostages to fortune.
Parents are the weak link in the chain when it comes to protecting their children.
Today, the growing economic and social pressures in our country are putting millions of women, children and families at increased risk of abuse and neglect, especially when families are denied basic support services and economic opportunity.
Cancer affects so many people, and even if it hasn't affected someone in your family then you know someone who has had it.
It's quite difficult for a parent to know that their daughter is in great danger.
'The Road' is about that fear that all parents can have - 'What's going to happen to your child if you're not around?'
Having a child changes everything. All of a sudden you have so much to lose, so much to live for.
That was kind of scary. You got the sense as a little kid that you might be at risk now, and then you're like, 'Why are we at risk? It's because my grandfather is in charge of all of this.' You can't really realize the magnitude of a job like that when you are eight.
I have a wife, I have sons: all of them hostages given to fate.
Whether your mother is a novelist like mine or a third-generation military wife, the idea of a son or daughter being in mortal danger is terrifying.
Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying
When I was in China, Mao was Chairman, and parents were terrified to tell their children anything that differed from the party line in case the children repeated it and endangered the whole family.
Millions of working, uninsured Americans go to bed every night worrying what will happen to them and their families if a major illness or injury strikes.
My family deals with those risks. The best I can do is talk to them about some of those risks. I'm not incredibly specific with them, especially with my kids.
Even after arriving in South Korea, it's dangerous. As a North Korean defector, I need to be careful from the spies to protect my relatives inside North Korea.
What happens across the planet can have a greater impact on your family than what happens down the street.
