I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You're going to trip over that for a good part of your life.

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.

Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience... and pimples.

Even if you know what you are doing, things go wrong. Things go wrong because building a multifaceted human organization to compete and win in a dynamic, highly competitive market turns out to be really hard.

But then as time passed, I learned the lesson that parents do early on. You fail sometimes. No matter how much you love your children, there are times you slip. There are moments you can't give, stutter, lose your temper, or simply lose face with the world, and you can't explain this to a child. (p236)

It is sometimes hard to be a family.

What a gamble it is to have children!

Of children as of procreation— the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.

But then as time passed, I learned the lesson that parents do early on. You fail sometimes. No matter how much you love your children, there are times you slip. There are moments you can't give, stutter, lose your temper, or simply lose face with the world, and you can't explain this to a child.

The problem with children is that you have to put up with their parents.

The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.

What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked it's hard to believe you ever were a child?

How easy it is to love a child, how hard to love what a child turns into!

Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.