A Quote by Nancy Gibbs

Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends.
Some parents were awful back then and are awful still. The process of raising you didn't turn them into grown-ups. Parents who were clearly imperfect can be helpful to you. As you were trying to grow up despite their fumbling efforts, you had to develop skills and tolerances other kids missed out on. Some of the strongest people I know grew up taking care of inept, invalid, or psychotic parents--but they know the parents weren't normal, healthy, or whole.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Fear of the unknown is our greatest fear. Many of us would enter a tiger's lair before we would enter a dark cave. While caution is a useful instinct, we lose many opportunities and much of the adventure of life if we fail to support the curious explorer within us.
I believe in a world of justice and human rights for all. A world where girls can grow up free of fear of abuse. A world where women are treated with the respect and dignity that is their right. A world where poverty is not acceptable. My dear young friends, you can make this your world.
Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew." "He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six." "Right." "And you're the oldest." "Yes." "That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.
You know those little snow globes that you shake up? I always thought my brain was sort of like that. You know, where you just give it a shake and watch what comes out and shake it again. It's like that.
I thought Marcus was going to be in my life forever. Then I thought I was wrong. Now he’s back. But this time I know what’s certain: Marcus will be gone again, and back again and again and again because nothing is permanent. Especially people. Strangers become friends. Friends become lovers. Lovers become strangers. Strangers become friends once more, and over and over. Tomorrow, next week, fifty years from now, I know I’ll get another one-word postcard from Marcus, because this one doesn’t have a period signifying the end of the sentence. Or the end of anything at all.
You're trying to grow up, and you don't want to be like your parents, and that gets mixed up with being Korean... They brought their values from Korea, and I accepted them because I didn't know anything more. But as I grow older, I feel more Korean every year; it's very strange.
I well remember the pride that my parents felt when my brother and I went up to Cambridge, but I also know many friends that I grew up with - brilliant, funny, acutely intelligent girls - who never fulfilled their potential.
I dont know whether its a fear of standing up, but I really love sitting at the table and blabbing. I learn so much that way, and I think I get free that way, free from inhibition and fears.
Blood doesn't make you family. Hell, an only child can bleed. It's the sharing of pain that makes you family. 'Cause, you can't really love a brother or sister until you know that they're as scarred and broken as you are. And, hey, if you grow up with a father like mine and you aren't at least a little scarred and broken, well then, that's not your father. You were spawned by an entirely different guy.
I feel like a mother-queen-vampire-Dracula because I want to make more girls so I can have more friends and more girls to play with, you know? For a long time, it was really just me. There were other girls in the niche underground, but not on a world level.
It's still hard for me to think about Sept. 11 sometimes. I'm still angry. It's hard to watch my daughters, Celia and Zaya, grow up and know they'll never see their father. They'll always be 9/11 girls, and I wish I could shield them from that. Everyone has an immediate pity for them. It is a sad thing, but the girls are also so happy.
I'm with my friends more than I'm with my parents, but I know more about my parents than I know about my friends. That's something you get out of living with a person.
I don't know what rituals my kids will carry into adulthood, whether they'll grow up attached to homemade pizza on Friday nights, or the scent of peppers roasting over a fire, or what. I do know that flavors work their own ways under the skin, into the heart of longing. Where my kids are concerned I find myself hoping for the simplest things: that if someday they crave orchards where their kids can climb into the branches and steal apples, the world will have trees enough with arms to receive them.
Sometimes I feel I know strangers Better than I know my friends Why must a beginning Be the means to an end? The stones from my enemies These wounds will mend But I cannot survive The roses from my friends.
I think we're much more eager to know about our parents than we were in the seventies.
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