He's fine. He's fine,' he kept saying as the baby became ever more cranky and bewildered; screaming in terror if she tried to put him down.'Why should he be unhappy?' she wanted to say. 'He has had so few days in this world. Why should the unhappiness start here?

Naming is nice. It took me days before I was able to speak a name for my first child (what if people did not like it?), and I suspect we gave her a secret, second name as well, to keep her safe.

No woman that I know is capable of leaving her child down for thirty seconds. She can't walk away without making sure that everything is absolutely as secure and safe for her child as can be.

People think motherhood involves a lot of domestic labor, and it doesn't. It involves being nice to your children as often as possible. That's part of my trick. I don't have that anxiety about meeting their needs.

My kids are supposed to live till they are one hundred. You don't have to have a perfect house or a perfect relationship with your child or a perfect child, and you yourself do not have to be perfect.