I believe the family to be terribly important, even when it is obsessive or repressive or full of insidious germs which can pollute life. But it’s a … - Natalia Ginzburg

But it was incredible how fear and danger never produced ignoble words but always true ones, words that were torn from your very heart.

(PB: You wrote your essay “The Little Virtues” a long time ago, really in another age. A number of American readers are very much taken with the piece while finding it a direct challenge to their familiar assumptions. Would you still offer parents the same advice with regard to the upbringing of their children or have your thoughts changed?) NG: I’m sure that I would write exactly the same thing; even in these difficult times one should only teach the big virtues, generosity more than anything else. The rest can be learned later on.

for a mistake, my God, you don’t make a child suffer!