I like trying to get pregnant. I’m not so sure about childbirth.

It’s a great thing about being pregnant – you don’t need excuses to pee or to eat.

I will say this: one of the things that is a pain when you’re expecting children is how much advice unsolicited people give you when you’re not asking for it.

I do not think that I am a natural born mother… If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.

Anyone who’s looked into a newborn’s innocent eyes should realize how incredible it is to be blessed with a new life.

I love our daughters more than anything in the world – more than life itself. And while that may not be the first thing that some folks want to hear from an Ivy-league-educated lawyer, it is truly who I am. So for me, being Mom-in-Chief is, and always will be, job number one.

While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country… and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President… like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance. How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.

I got the stern end of the stick. It was kind of that iron fist. I am who I am today because of my mother.

My kids are coming up in a different time then me. Interracial couples are of the norm. With me, it’s about making sure my kids understand the importance of education and having opportunities that I didn’t. My goal as a parent is to make sure they don’t take what they have for granted.

I was raised by a mother who told me I was great every day of my life.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

I’m just glad I was able to return to some of that innocence and beauty I had as a child when I started my own family, and my children brought me back some of that spirit.

I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.

These wretched babies don’t come until they are ready.

I’ve always wanted a baby.

If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

There’s something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she’s only measured water in it.

The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

I always wanted to be a father and thought it would be great, but it just took the right woman and the right time to make it all happen.

Any other woman who has to go to work and pick up the kids and make dinner – that’s way harder than what I have to do.

I had my first baby at twenty-one.

I’ve never lived my life in the opinion of others. I believe I’m a good person. I believe I’m a good mom. But that’s for my kids to decide, not for the world.

I sing seriously to my mom on the phone. To put her to sleep, I have to sing ‚Maria‘ from West Side Story. When I hear her snoring, I hang up.

Actually, I didn’t start sweating until I had children.

If something inconveniences my children too much or takes me away from them, I won’t do it.

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you’d would wake up times and hope that the next day you’d be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father’s head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences… everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving – she’s better than me.

I want at least five kids. I want twins.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn’t in her.

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.

If there’s a pregnancy rumor, people will find out it’s not true when you wind up not being pregnant, like nine months from now, and if there’s a house rumor, they’ll find out it’s not true when you are actively not ever spotted at that house.

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

Children make your life important.

Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up.

He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

My mother loved children – she would have given anything if I had been one.

What gift has providence bestowed on man that is so dear to him as his children?

When I was four, my mother insisted I get out of the car and find my own way home. Although I got lost, I did find my way home. It taught me the value of independence at an early age.

My mom, she was a very, very soft woman. It was hard for her to yell or even curse. But when it came to fighting for her kids, she found a strength she didn’t always know she had.

When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list.

For an Ethiopian mother, if you have a chubby kid, it means you’re doing something good.

I had a C-section, and I found it fascinating. I didn’t find it a sacrifice, and I didn’t find it a painful experience. I found it a fascinating miracle of what a body can do.

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

If you’re the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I’m a parent. I have daughters.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

I think about the milestones from my childhood and what it will be like to watch our kids go through them. Taking Riley to her first day of school was a whirlwind. I can’t imagine what middle school is going to be like, and high school, and graduation.

It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?

My first job in all honesty is going to continue to be mom-in-chief. Making sure that in this transition, which will be even more of a transition for the girls… that they are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe.