American culture at large has failed working mothers.

It's not the nineteenth century; I'm not meant to be judged on how good a housekeeper I am. Getting down on the floor with a lemon and a bucket of vinegar does not make me a better person.

Her conclusion: "You just have to follow your own heart" when it comes to medical decision-making.

If you're not at least a tiny bit jealous at this point, you might want to check for your own pulse.

[Judith Warner:] Our neurotic quest to perfect the mechanics of mothering can be interpreted as an effort to do on an individual level what we’ve stopped trying to do on a society-wide one.

Even amongst fierce flames/ The golden lotus can be planted.

I feel like one of those cartoon characters helplessly following the scent of something yummy when I’m near him.

The reason why I changed the meaning of the golden rule is because everyone has forgotten to the critical law of do on to others

The grace of silence-enduring hard times.

Death is just a distant rumour to the young.

I never thought honor would feel like betrayal.

Nobody's going to go home for a year and come back. Nobody could ever enforce that. Nobody in their right mind would ever try to do it.

I've always known a lot of very bad people, destructive, brutes of a certain kind. Then I've seen these lovely impulses and what not, and they've stayed with me and comforted me.

I always had the theory that if you have a dream, chase it. And I'm chasing it.

She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last.