My mother taught us to play baseball, to bake a cake, to play fair - she beat the living daylights out of us sometimes, and she loved us with all her heart; she taught her favorite poets, and there is no child care in the world that will ever be a substitute for what that lady was in our life.

Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.

Growing up in the rural south, my family didn't look like our neighbors, and we didn't have much. There were times that were tough, but we had each other, and we had the opportunity to do anything, to be anything, as long as we were willing to work for it.

I usually claim that pregnant women should not read books about pregnancy and birth. Their time is too precious. They should, rather, watch the moon and sing to their baby in the womb.

The Lord only knows how many times I let my children go hungry rather than take secretly the bread I liked not to ask for.

Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.