Whether you’ve had children of your own or not, you have witnessed the transforming power children can have on people’s lives.  The effects of this transformation and unconditional love on people and families have not escaped notice by the literary and art world.  Below are a few quotes that capture the beauty of children and parenthood that can almost describe the real thing.

“Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood – finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.”
― Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match

“In a child’s eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“Motherhood is a choice you make every day, to put someone else’s happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you’re not sure what the right thing is…and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.”
― Donna Ball, At Home on Ladybug Farm

“Supermom wasn’t a bad job description. The pay was lousy if you were talking about real money. But the payoff was priceless in so many other ways.”
― Roxanne Henke

“A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity. It didn’t matter if her child were three, thirteen, or thirty.”
― Sarah Strohmeyer, Kindred Spirits

“It seems to me that since I’ve had children, I’ve grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.”
― Anne Tyler

“Then she had been a fiancee, a young wife, and a mother, and she had discovered that these words were far too small ever to contain the experience.”
― Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

These snippets and glimpses from others who have seen children and had children are able to identify the love, pain and pure joy of bringing and caring for another life in this world.