“When you're your parents' one shot at a genetic legacy, you may get to...” — Jeffrey Kluger Quote

“When you're your parents' one shot at a genetic legacy, you may get to attend all the best schools, wear all the best clothes and eat all the best foods - at least relative to children in multiple-sibling households. But you also wind up with an overweening sense of your own importance.”

“Odds are you know some narcissists. Odds are they're smart, confident and articulate. They make you laugh, they make you think; the first time you met, they probably charmed the pants off of you - perhaps even literally. The odds are also that that spell didn't last.”

“There aren't a lot of ironclad rules of family life, but here's one: No matter how much your parents deny it - and here's betting they deny it a lot - they have a favorite child. And if you're a parent, so do you.”

“Indeed, the best way to think of willpower is not as some shapeless behavioral trait but as a sort of psychic muscle, one that can atrophy or grow stronger depending on how it's used.”

“Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most inchoate form.”

“I went to Dunbar High School, recognized as the best high school of the segregated era. The education enabled students from Dunbar to attend the best colleges and universities in the country.”

“If I had my druthers, I would be a brain in a jar, with a burlap skirt around the cart I'm on - I don't attend to my physical being much.”

“Any parent who tells their kids that they can't attend a school play or go to a soccer match because they have to work is kidding themselves. It's OK to miss a game or two or a performance here and there, but it's not all right to miss the majority of them.”

“The process of establishing the identity of passport applicants needs to be strengthened by introducing a requirement for some applicants to attend a passport office in person.”

“Being mothers, we try to stay home as much as possible and attend to the children.”

“When I go to Rome, I fast on Saturday, but in Milan I do not. Do you also follow the custom of whatever church you attend, if you do not want to give or receive scandal.”