You should make it hard on yourself to write so youβre easier to read.
Fran LebowitzRead
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.
Interpretation
Parenting is less about extraordinary achievements and more about raising a well-adjusted individual.
In this quote, Fran Lebowitz emphasizes that the primary role of a parent is not to mold their child into a future superstar or groundbreaking innovator but rather to instill basic decency and understanding. Success in parenting can be measured by the child's ability to navigate life with simple, meaningful values rather than lofty societal expectations.
In practice
A speech at a parenting seminar to inspire new parents.
You should make it hard on yourself to write so youβre easier to read.
Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word - politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.
I must take issue with the term 'a mere child,' for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult.
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.
For children, Christmas is anticipation. For adults, Christmas is memory.
My mother... would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, 'I don't know what's wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?' You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.
Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel, and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune.
I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't grow up with an aching void in them--like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it.
My immediate family was always very supportive. It was my own fear of the rest of the world not accepting me, the rest of our society not accepting my wish to be an actor.
Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.
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