Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.
Interpretation
Raising children requires bravery and determination.
In this quote, John Steinbeck reflects on the profound challenge of parenting, suggesting that it demands a special kind of courage. The act of nurturing and guiding children through lifeβs complexities can be daunting, and it requires steadfastness in the face of uncertainties and responsibilities.
In practice
During a parent-teacher conference, a teacher might quote Steinbeck to emphasize the importance of parental involvement.
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
At one point, as Samuel urges Adam to raise his boys well regardless of the blood that might be in them, Adam tells him, "You can't make a race horse of a pig." Samuel replies, "No, but you can make a very fast pig.
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
It moves one's heart to think: Nine months before I was born there was a woman who loved me deeply. She did not know what I was going to be like, but she loved me because she carried me in her womb.
My mother, she killed me, My father, he ate me, My sister Marlene, Gathered all my bones, Tied them in a silken scarf, Laid them beneath the juniper tree, Tweet, tweet, what a beautiful bird am I.
Fathering imposed an obligation that was more than your money, your body, or your time, a presence neither physical nor measurable by clocks: open-ended, eternal, and invisible, like the commitment of gravity to the stars.
He touched the screen as if trying to reach through with his hand. "You're a wonderful young lady. I don't tell you that often enough. You remind me so much of your mother. She'd be proud. And Grandpa Tom" --he chuckled-- "he always said you'd be the most powerful voice in our family. You're going to outshine me some day, you know. They're going to remember me as Piper McLean's father, and that's the best legacy I can imagine.
It can't hurt to go to the people you love, whose blood type courses through your veins and whose DNA, from a certain angle, contains many of the same markings as yours. You don't have to take their advice, but let them share their version of solutions to life's difficulties. Good or bad - it could be interesting.
~Sometimes, when I want to take on the world, I try to remember that it's just as important to sit down and ask my son how he's feeling or talk to him about life.~
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.