Karen

“Her teachers called them “behaviors,” as if any action from a child beyond total compliance was implicitly bad.”
― Sara Nović, True Biz

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, somebody let me speak the truth, somebody let me," she cried... "Saying it is the only thing that makes me feel better, even the drugs aren't as good as that. All the things we don't say, all the words we swallow, and it makes nothing but trouble. I want to talk before I die. I want to be the one who gets to say things, who gets to think the deep thoughts. You'll all talk when I'm gone. Let me talk now without shushing me because it hurts you to hear what I have to say. I'm tired of being shushed.”
― Anna Quindlen, One True Thing

“Mr. Tongo tells Rosie, "We discuss lots of intimate things with our friends, but our genitals, and those of our children, are private. Many of my patients and clients-kids as well as their parents, people dealing with a whole range of conditions, not just this one-find they don't want to explain themselves every time they meet someone new. They don't want to be responsible for educating everyone they meet. They don't consider what's in their pants to be any of anyone else's business." (Chapter "Everyone Who?)”
― Laurie Frankel, This Is How It Always Is

“The novelist in me is inspired by how much raising children is like writing books: You don’t know where they’re going until they get there. You may think you do, but you’re probably wrong. Corralling and forcing them against their will to go where you first imagined they would isn’t going to work for anyone involved. Never mind you’re the one writing and raising them, they are headed in their own direction, independent of you. And scary though that is, it’s also how it should be.”
― Laurie Frankel, This Is How It Always Is