David Foster Wallace:

If you've never wept and want to, have a child.

Paul Ford:

You meet kids with developmental issues, or kids with serious illnesses. The parents have gone a little off, exhausted by the stress. They are tired and often curt. Whatever they're doing is the best they can do, and you think, I can't imagine. But of course you do imagine. When you see the kid with the extra chromosome, you see that it's the same exact love that you know. It's all the same love.

Rachel DeWoskin:

Is it possible to re-imagine what you can't remember?

My friend, the writer Emily Rapp,
who just lost her baby, Ronan, to Tay-Sachs,
likes to respond,
"Yes, you can,"
when people say, "I can't imagine."

Marcel Proust:

We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, and effort which no one can spare us.

Michael Chabon:

Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted -- not taught -- to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?