Parents are indeed capable of routinely torturing their children without anyone interceding.

The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation.

The victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it.

What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.

Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.

For the human soul is virtually indestructible, and its ability to rise from the ashes remains as long as the body draws breath.

The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.

Disrespect is the weapon of the weak

All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection

Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated. We can only repress them, delude ourselves, and deceive our bodies. The body sticks to the facts.

We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.

I don’t feel very much like Pooh today, " said Pooh."There there, " said Piglet. "I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.

Now I feel free, and hope is creeping back. Maybe because I'm paying attention to what I have rather than what's missing.

I must have been 3 years old or less, and I remember paging through these comics, trying to figure out the stories. I couldn't read the words, so I made up my own stories.

Beauty seen makes the one who sees it more beautiful.

In Los Angeles, I feel like the ugly duckling, like I'm from Venus or something.

My mother taught me a lot of things, but they had big presuppositions built in - like her expectation that I'd be a missionary nurse in a religious order.

The Nile, forever new and old, Among the living and the dead, Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled.

The real nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not present did not exist.

Compliment others on the virtues they have; and they're not half as pleased as being complimented for the ones they don't have.

The mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.