Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

Another parent's different approach raises the possibility that you've made a mistake with your child. We simply can't tolerate that because we fear that any mistake no matter how minor could have devastating consequences. So we proclaim the superiority of our own choices. We've lost sight of the fact that people have preferences.

One of the darkest deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

What our children have to fear is not the cars on the highways of tomorrow but our own pleasure in calculating the most elegant parameters of their deaths.

Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear but the fact is the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte my first child was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.

Mine are the deep-seated fears established when we are children and they never quite go away: the fear of being helpless the fear of being trapped the fear of being out of control.

A child's fear is a world whose dark corners are quite unknown to grownup people it has its sky and its abysses a sky without stars abysses into which no light can ever penetrate.

No one should have to choose between medicine and other necessities. No one should have to use the emergency room every time a child gets sick. And no one should have to live in constant fear that a medical problem will become a financial crisis.

Even as we enumerate their shortcomings the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers' incredible strength. We fear both. If they are not strong who will protect us? If they are not imperfect how can we equal them?

Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.

When a child can be brought to tears and not from fear of punishment but from repentance he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from the grief of their conduct you can be sure there is an angel nestling in their heart.

We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift also its greatest curse is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.

Having a child that's always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

A child understands fear and the hurt and hate it brings.

Hate is the consequence of fear we fear something before we hate it a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.

As a child I was more afraid of tetanus shots than for example Dracula.

My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers - it's what my children call my 'dead author wall.' I have signatures from Mark Twain Earnest Hemingway Jack London Harriett Beecher Stowe Pearl Buck Charles Dickens Rudyard Kipling Alfred Lord Tennyson to name a few.

I don't feel I was ever a 'famous' child actor. I was just a working actor who happened to be a kid. I was never really in a hit show until I was a teenager with West Wing playing First Daughter Zoey Bartlet. In a way that was my saving grace - not being a star on a hit show. It kept me working and kept me grounded.

'Howard the Duck!' That's a really interesting movie. I appreciate my career because I've had a lot of very interesting ups and downs and most people... That movie is such a famous flop. In a land of a lot of flops it's kind of awesome to be in a really famous flop. I mean it's kind of a poster child for flops.

There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous - and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman now and the man was gone.

I certainly don't want a child of mine to be famous or anyone I was very close to who isn't yet... It's the worst thing to be trapped in your house not be able to leave.

My discrepancy with children in the industry is that they are made famous before they know who they are as human beings.

The records of adopted children are sealed in California. That seal is considered inviolable... The judge ruled that because I was famous he didn't have the same rights as other kids.