Shriver Children Quotes & Sayings

Children without access to quality early education programs start kindergarten with an 18-month disadvantage, and that gap continues to widen. By the time they are in fourth grade, many cannot do math or read at grade level. — Mark Shriver

Now that children don't till your fields or take you in when you're incontinent, there is no sensible reason to have them, and it's amazing that with the advent of effective contraception anyone chooses to reproduce at all. — Lionel Shriver

[Children] would have messed up my apartment. In the main, they are ungrateful. They would have siphoned too much time away from the writing of my precious books. — Lionel Shriver

It wasn't until the 1920s that a bare majority of children grew up in families where the father's labor purchased the family's provisions, while their mother did unpaid child care, elder care, and housework.

The Great Depression and World War II disrupted this family form, but it roared back in the 1950s, when the percentage of wives and mothers who were supported entirely by their husbands' wages reached a high that has never been equaled, before or since. — Stephanie Coontz

You see," I proceeded, "by the time he was eleven or twelve, this was all too late. The no-gun rules, the computer codes ... Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive, it's a vanity. We want to be able to tell ourselves what good parents we are, that we're doing our best. If I had it all to do over again, I'd have let Kevin play with whatever he wanted; he liked little enough. And I'd have ditched the TV rules, the G-rated videos. They only made us look foolish. They underscored our powerlessness, and they provoked his contempt. — Lionel Shriver

I've been smart enough to have lived my life stupidly. — Faina Ranevskaya

Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity. — Lionel Shriver

With Maria Shriver, he raised four fantastic children. In the wake of a scandal he brought upon himself, he tried to keep his family together. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Bengal is poor not because of lack of capital but lack of ideas and vision. — Debasish Mridha

Having children-the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings-is the biggest job anyone can embark on. You have to take a leap of faith and ask lots of people for their help and guidance. — Maria Shriver

Though the power be wanting, yet the wish is praiseworthy. — Ovid

They proceeded with an infinite guile that would have horrified her parents. — F Scott Fitzgerald

What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter? — Charlotte Bronte

I was disquieted to realize that he had ceased to call me anything at all. That seemed impossible, but your children generally use your name when they want something, if only attention, and Kevin was loath to beseech me for so much as a turned head. — Lionel Shriver

And of course Brian was far more upset about separation from those two blond moppets than about leaving Louise. There shouldn't be any problem loving both, but for some reason certain men choose; like good mutual-fund managers minimizing risk while maximizing portfolio yield, they take everything they once invested in their wives and sink it into their children instead. What is it? Do they seem safer, because they need you? Because you can never become their ex-father, as I think I might become your ex-wife? — Lionel Shriver

Who's that? That's the King. Who's he? The Duke. Who's she? The Princess. What do they call you? The Count. What does that make me? Umm ... how about the Peasant? And the name stuck. — Jordan Sonnenblick

I first foreswore motherhood when I was about eight years old ... [Children] were annoying. We were loud and sneaky and broke things. As an eight-year-old, maybe I was simply mortified by the prospect of being saddled with myself. — Lionel Shriver

Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart could have recovered greenness? — George Herbert

Wasn't there only one respectable memento of a man worth keeping, the kind that draws Valentines and learns to spell Mississippi? — Lionel Shriver

The simplest words we use to describe each other - such as friend, family, stranger - are loaded with judgments. The enormous gulf in meaning between friend and stranger, for example, is filled with interpretations. A friend is treated one way, an enemy another. Even if we do not bring these judgments to the surface, they cloud our vision like dust obscuring a lens. — Deepak Chopra

For once the stone hits the surface of the pond, the ripples never really stop. — Greg Iles

There's something nihilistic about not having children — Lionel Shriver

Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the displacements amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring. — Lionel Shriver

My father never was and isn't a mean man. You know, he never was ruthless. And he succeeded in life without sticking it to anybody. And that's a great example for a man, a strong man, a man's man, to give to his children. You can succeed, you can be successful, without walking over somebody. — Maria Shriver

After all, she had announced at our introduction in September that she "simply loves children," Miss Fabricant, with a blunt snub of a nose like a Charlotte potato and hips like Idahos, the infeasible assertion seems to decode, "I want to get married. — Lionel Shriver

Kiss the lips upon me once, and I shall never tell. — Chrissy Moon

The pediatrician must have thought me one of those neurotic mothers who craved distinction for her child but who in our civilization's latter-day degeneracy could only conceive of the exceptional in terms of deficiency or affliction. — Lionel Shriver

It's not your fault that you're slow. I'm sure it's hard to recover from being hit on the head with a silver spoon. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I counsel our children to do their critical studying in the early hours of the morning when they're fresh and alert, rather than to fight physical weariness and mental exhaustion at night. I've learned the power of the dictum, "Early to bed, early to rise." When I'm under pressure, you won't find me burning the midnight oil. I'd much rather be in bed early and getting up in the wee hours of the morning ... — Boyd K. Packer

Marie-Laure smiles, and he laughs a pure, contagious laugh, one she will try to remember all her life, father and daughter turning in circles on the sidewalk in front of their apartment house, laughing together while snow sifts through the branches above. — Anthony Doerr

Before I started MakerBot, I was creating cool stuff and sharing it with the Internet. That's how I knew all the folks at BoingBoing, at Engadget and Gizmodo. — Bre Pettis

I suspect that children want their parents to be busy; they don't want to have to fill your schedule with their paltry needs. Children want to be assured that there are other things to do, important things; more important, on occasion, than they are. — Lionel Shriver

Because let's talk about power. In the domestic polity, myth dictates that parents are endowed with a disproportionate amount of it. I'm not so sure. Children? They can break our hearts, for a start. They can shame us, they can bankrupt us, and I can personally attest that they can make us wish we were never born. What can we do? Keep them from going to the movies. But how? With what do we back up our prohibitions if the kid heads belligerently for the door? The crude truth is that parents are like governments: We maintain our authority through the threat, overt or implicit, of physical force. — Lionel Shriver

Writing books is one of the ways that human beings deal with loss, especially when you don't have religious consolation available. — Marco Roth

(Note curtailment. Not conclusion.) 7. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself.) 8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend's five-year-old in the room.) 9. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew - every woman, too, which is depressing - would — Lionel Shriver