“We find a delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

more info

“Where an adult uses his fingers, a child uses the palm of its hand, respectively the carpentry and masonry of gesture.”

Malcolm de Chazal

more info

“Being with a three-year-old is like constantly being in the middle of a very bad breakup. Irrational tirades and operatic flights of rage are tempered with appeasing manipulation.”

Claire Dederer

more info

“I can think of few better ways to introduce a child to books than to let her stack them, upend them, rearrange them, and get her fingerprints all over them.”

Anne Fadiman

more info

“I suggest that the most important interview is the child’s interview of the teacher. The child is preparing to leave the caring and loving environment of his parents, where he is free to act as he chooses. Is this teacher worthy of his trust?”

Lakshmi Kripalani

more info

“That’s how it works. When a baby dies, other dead children become suddenly visible: Daughters and sons. First cousins. The neighbor kid. The first child. The last child. Your older brother. Some of their names have been forgotten; some never had names in the first place. They disappeared under heaps of advice. Don’t dwell. Have another child, a makeup baby. Life is for the living. But then another baby dies, and here they are again, in stories, and you will love them all, and—if you are the mother of a dead child yourself—they will keep coming to you. A couple I know just lost their baby. And you will know that your lost child has appeared somewhere else in the world. I know a couple…”

Elizabeth McCracken

more info

“I was a tiny child—really tiny—and I loved tiny things. Seeds are a really powerful tiny thing.”

Ken Greene

more info

“What will happen to us when our children have no connection with what is wild in the land, its depth, danger, generosity? What will life be like for children who do not grow up paying close attention to it and testing themselves against it? And what will happen to those children who ache for it, as I did, but cannot find it anywhere?”

Susan Hand Shetterly

more info

“A child who believes that every scratch needs to be painted with iodine has lost a certain grip on life which he may never regain, and has acquired a frailty of spirit which may unfit him for living.”

E. B. White

more info

“If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.”

Clayton M. Christensen

more info

“It’s not enough to make time for your children. There are certain stages in their lives when you have to give them the time when they want it. You can’t run your family like a company. It doesn’t work.”

Andrew Grove

more info

“My brother was light-skinned, dark-haired, blue-eyed. He was the type of child everyone smiled at. He could look at you and draw you out. People fell for him. On the street, women ruffled his hair. Workingmen punched him gently on the shoulder. He had no idea that his presence sustained people, made them happy, drew out their improbable yearnings—he just plowed along, oblivious.”

Colum McCann

more info

“Life is so short, so fragile, so mystifying. After all, how many people do we actually love in the course of a lifetime? Just a few, a tiny few. When most of them are gone, the map of your inner world changes. As my friend George Oppen once said to me about getting old: what a strange thing to happen to a little boy.”

Paul Auster

more info

“As a kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation.”

Kurt Vonnegut

more info

“Every child understands a promise—if it is kept—and looks forward to the next promise.”

John Irving

more info