“The purest love is the one between parents and their children. The rest may be more elevated, but never as deep or long-lasting”

“For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.”

“Love is one of the true mysteries,' he said at last. 'The truest and the deepest of all. One thing, Maerad: to love is never wrong. It may be disastrous; it may never be possible; it may be the deepest agony. But it is never wrong.”

“All people respect and love their own parents and children, as well as the parents and children of others.”

“I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as is needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love.”

“Salt is born of the purest parents: the sun and the sea.”

“Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.”

“Most of the parents I interviewed for this book said they would never want other children than the ones they had, which at first seemed surprising given the challenges their children embody. But why do any of us prefer our own children, all of them defective in some regard, to others real or imagined? If some glorious angel descended into my living room and offered to exchange my children for other, better children—brighter, kinder, funnier, more loving, more disciplined, more accomplished—I would clutch the ones I have and, like most parents, pray away the atrocious specter.”

“If we want our children to have a balance between their abilities to earn money and show love, it will help if both their parents model that balance.”

“God, he suddenly understood, was love in its purest form, and in these last months with his children, he had felt His touch as surely as he had heard the music spilling from Ronnie's hands.”