After your baby is born, guilt can grow into a monster that sits on your shoulder and whispers into your ear, "Mirror, mirror on t...he wall--who's the guiltiest of them all?" The answer is working mothers. Every time you can't calm your screaming baby, the guilt monster will tell you that if you were a true mom, an at- home mom, you would know what to do. . . . Everytime something goes wrong at work, it will tell you that it's your fault for trying to be a "supermom."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I'll come up the steps to the house and the gardener will be clipping away at the hedges and he'll say, "Good evening, Mr. Younger...." And I'll say, "Hello, Jefferson, how are you this evening?" And I'll go inside and Ruth will come downstairs and meet me at the door and we'll kiss each other and she'll take my arm and we'll go up to your room to see you sitting on the floor with the catalogues of all the great schools in America around you.... All the great schools in the world! And--and I'll say, all right son--it's your seventeenth birthday, what is it you've decided?... Just tell me, what it is you want to be--and you'll be it.... Whatever you want to be--Yessir! You just name it, so ... and I hand you the world!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do ...something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it's your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone el...se. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It works, there is nothing wrong with it. You have a hole, it's a poultice.... You have an eye, it's an image. My boy, it's your last resort. Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Like sleep disturbances, some worries at separation can be expected in the second year. If you accept this, then you will avoid re...acting to this anxiety as if it's your fault. A mother who feels guilty will appear anxious to the child, as if to affirm the child's anxiety. By contrast, a parent who understands that separation anxiety is normal is more likely to react in a way that soothes and reassures the child.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Faces, suddenly suspended above you; faces that you think it's your business to love... if only you could remember their names.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners--your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards--who... dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All men are homosexual, some turn straight. It must be very odd to be a straight man because your sexuality is hopelessly defensiv...e. It's like an ideal of racial purity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »