"Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells... to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin. "
— Dave Barry

"Shoulda gone to China. They give away babies like free iPods. They put them in guns and shoot them out at sporting events. "
— Diablo Cody (Juno: The Shooting Script)

"Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.
But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.
In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.
The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves.
In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber."
— Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber)

"If you were to open up a baby's head -- and I am not for a moment suggesting that you should -- you would find nothing but an enormous drool gland."
— Dave Barry

"'Marry, don't marry,' Auntie Aya says as we unfold layers of dough to make an apple strudel.

'Just don't have your babies unless it's absolutely necessary.'

'How do I know if it's necessary?'

She stops and stares ahead, her hands gloved in flour. 'Ask yourself, Do I want a baby or do I want to make a cake? The answer will come to you like bells ringing.' She flickers her fingers in the air by her ear. 'For me, almost always, the answer was cake.'"
— Diana Abu-Jaber (The Language of Baklava: A Memoir)

"A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name."
— Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)

"Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9 Months, with Tools You Probably Have around the Home."
— Dave Barry (Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9 Months, with Tools You Probably Have around the Home)

"There are those wonderful moments of clarity in life when one is reminded how irreparably flawed we humans are. Once, when I was nineteen, on the subway in Boston I lost my balance slightly and bumped into an elderly woman. I quickly apologized and she replied, "Well, hold on to something, stupid." There it is. That's it. That's it in a nutshell. I don't want to sound negative, but I think every fetus should be shown a film of that incident, maybe projected up on the uterine wall, and then asked if it wants to come out. I am a strong believer in a woman's right to choose, but I also think that in the last trimester, the kid should be given every opportunity to back out."
— Paula Poundstone

"Babies are such a nice way to start people."
— Don Herold

"This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven."
— Rick Bragg

"Newborn babies can't do much on their own-
They can't eat or walk or talk on the phone-
But every parent is sure their creation is without a doubt a tremendous sensation."
— Jennifer Davis (First Comes Love : All About The Birds And Bees - And Alligators, Possums, And People, Too.)

"You lay your hand against his skin and just rib his back. Blow into his ear. Press that baby up against your own skin and walk outside with him, where the night air will sourround him, and moonlight fall on his face. Whistle, maybe. Dance. Hum. Pray.

(how to calm a crying baby)"
— Joyce Maynard

"I've never really understood the desire people have to quantify a baby. "He's X big and Y long," As if the baby is a fish you're not sure you're going to keep. Or some prize potato you're hoping will win a prize at the county fair.
"
— Patrick Rothfuss

"Having a baby is part of a woman's life, and it is surely a great waste to be afraid of life."
— Joan Lowery Nixon (In The Face of Danger)

"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet."
— George W. Bush

"Outside of having kids, getting tattooed is one of the worst mistakes a person can make, yet somehow (much like having kids) millions of people do it every year. "
— Aviva Yael

"An ugly baby is a very nasty object - and the prettiest is frightful."
— Queen Victoria

"...For having a baby's sweet face so close to your own, for so long a time as it takes to nurse 'em, is a great tonic for a sad soul."
— Erica Eisdorfer (The Wet Nurse's Tale)