When Kate was born, she was born into a world of joy and happiness and confidence. The difference between the children is night and day. She's happy, she's thriving, she's full of self-confidence. I tell her she's beautiful every day before I send her off to school.

And so today, my world it smiles,Your hand in mine, we walk the miles,Thanks to you it will be done,For you to me are the only one.

Led Zeppelin

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

Oscar Wilde

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

Johann von Goethe

I think I'm fascinated by the power of religion in our culture. Like a lot of secular, liberal people, I ignored it for a long time. Lately, of course, just from a political perspective, it's impossible to ignore.

Tom Perrotta

It was actually a women's writing group I belonged to in graduate school that gave me the courage to move from poetry to fiction.

Mary Gordon

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

Niccolo Machiavelli

I don't listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don't have a car.

David Byrne

Behind the veil of each night, there is a smilling dawn.

Kahlil Gibran

One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

Ayelet Waldman

Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.

George Bernard Shaw

HOW do you define a word without concrete meaning? To each his own, the saying goes, soWHYpush to attain an ideal state of being that no two random people will agree isWHERE you want to be? Faultless. Finished. Incomparable. People can never be these, and anyway,WHENdid creating a flawless facade become a more vital goal than learning to love the personWHOlives inside your skin? The outside belongs to others. Only you should decide for you -WHATis perfect.

Ellen Hopkins

Suffering is one of life's great teachers.

Bryant H. McGill