There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined youd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature. – Ayelet Waldman
One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals. – Ayelet Waldman
So many women today have become so focused on their children, theyve developed these romantic entanglements with their childrens lives, and the husbands are secondary. Theyre left out. And the romantic focus is on the children. – Ayelet Waldman
Im sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor, but Ive never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them. – Ayelet Waldman
Ah, if he could have plunged up into the clouds, so as to sweep thereon through the undulating heavens over the boundless earth!—ah, if he could have floated with the flower-fragrance over the flowers,—could have streamed with the wind over the summits, through the woods! – Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography,