In his youth Jim had dreams of becoming a writer. In fact he was still dreaming about that until long into Jack’s childhood. Then he started to dream that Jack might become a writer instead. That’s an impossible thing for sons to grasp, and a source of shame for fathers to have to admit: that we don’t want our children to pursue their own dreams or walk in our footsteps. We want to walk in their footsteps while they pursue our dreams.

When Peter and Kira had their first child, Isak, Kira said to him, "This is what we are now. Everything else comes after this. First and foremost, we are parents!" Peter already knew that, of course. All parents know. It's not a voluntary process, it's an emotional assault; you become someone else's property the first time you hear your child cry. You belong to that little person now. Before everything else. So when something happens to your child, it never stops being your fault.

You don't have to like all children. Just one. And children don't need the world's best parents, just their own parents. To be perfectly honest with you, what they need most of the time is a chauffeur.

You're the funniest thing she knows. That's why she always draws you in color.

It's hard for a parent to accept that you can't protect your child from everything.""It's hard for a child to accept it too," says Elsa, and pats him on the cheek.

...a poco a poco altri bambini diversi iniziano a fare compagnia a Elsa e Alex, finchè sono così in tanti...finchè diventano un esercito. Perchè se sono in tanti a essere diversi, allora nessuno è normale

Children need the lie to be brave enough to sleep in their beds; parents need it to be able to get up the next morning.

The children's hobbies aren't only the children's hobbies - the parents put just as many hours into them, year after year, sacrificing so much, paying out such huge amounts of money, that their significance eats its way even into adult brains. They started to symbolize other things compensating for or reinforcing the parents' own failures.