Quotes on My Children

What is the good life? What is the good man? The good woman? What is the good society and what is my relation to it? What are my obligations to society? What is best for my children? What is justice? Truth? Virtue? What is my relation to nature, to death, to aging, to pain, to illness? How can I live a zestful, enjoyable, meaningful life? What is my responsibility to my brothers? Who are my brothers? What shall I be loyal to? What must I be ready to die for?

Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver's seat and keeping quiet.

Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.

The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future.

Three of my children are medical doctors; they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew, but they don't know much more about soul than he did.

People of color have to do this work as a mater of everyday survival. And so long as they have to, who am I to act as if I have a choice in the matter? Especially when my future and that of my children in large part depends on the eradication of racism? There is no choice.

My daughter, Grace, was not killed by a gun. She died suddenly at age 5 from a virulent form of strep. As I stood stunned in a church at her memorial, one of the hardest things I heard someone say was, 'I'm going to go home and hug my child a little tighter.' 'Well, good for you,' I thought. 'I'm going to go home and scream.'

One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it work. I love my work, I love my children, I've got wonderful friends, you know, I have a nice life.

Just write. If you have to make a choice, if you say, 'Oh well, I'm going to put the writing away until my children are grown,' then you don't really want to be a writer. If you want to be a writer, you do your writing... If you don't do it, you probably don't want to be a writer, you just want to have written and be famous—which is very different.

We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children's memories, the adventures we've had together in nature will always exist.

I'm not a great man to my children. I'm just 'Pop.' The more involved I am with my kids, it keeps my head flat on top.

I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place

~My instinct is to protect my children from pain. But adversity is often the thing that gives us character and backbone. It's always been a struggle for me to back off and let my children go through difficult experiences.~

Rock is my child and my grandfather.

My children give me a great sense of wonder. Just to see them develop into these extraordinary human beings.

With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relative, my children, my home. I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the Army.

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home.

There have been times when I wanted children and other times I've been grateful not to have them. I am a mess if I have to say goodbye to my dog for longer than five days. I don't know how I would deal with kissing my children as I left for work. I know there are women who are able to do that. I don't know if I could.

I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.