Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out about a century ago that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent.

What do girls do who haven't any mothers to help them through their troubles?

Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.

When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning not the result of ignorance or accident its children will become the foundation of a new race.

The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly - indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.

Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are we must know our mothers names.

Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children you're thinking about working.

It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion it is a joy of every moment.

Being a mother is hard and it wasn't a subject I ever studied.