I usually claim that pregnant women should not read books about pregnancy and birth. Their time is too precious. They should, rather, watch the moon and sing to their baby in the womb.

Life is tough enough without having someone kick you from the inside.

A mother does not become pregnant in order to provide employment to medical people. Giving birth is an ecstatic jubilant adventure not available to males. It is a woman’s crowning creative experience of a lifetime.

Giving birth and being born brings us into the essence of creation, where the human spirit is courageous and bold and the body, a miracle of wisdom.

Now my belly is as noble as my heart.

A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten and the future worth living for.

A baby is something you carry inside you for nine months, in your arms for three years, and in your heart until the day you die.

You are the closest I will ever come to magic.

Pregnancy is getting company inside one’s skin.

Whether your pregnancy was meticulously planned, medically coaxed, or happened by surprise, one thing is certain – your life will never be the same.

A baby fills a place in your heart that you never knew was empty.

Everything grows rounder and wider and weirder, and I sit here in the middle of it all and wonder who in the world you will turn out to be.

He plough’d her, and she cropp’d

If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.

We have a secret in our culture, and it’s not that birth is painful. It’s that women are strong.

Giving birth should be your greatest achievement not your greatest fear.

Before you were born I carried you under my heart. From the moment you arrived in this world until the moment I leave it, I will always carry you in my heart.

Everything grows rounder and wider and weirder, and I sit here in the middle of it all and wonder who in the world you will turn out to be.

The most important thing she’d learned over the years was that there was no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.

Of course I can do this. I’m pregnant, not brain-damaged. My condition doesn’t change my personality.

People always say that pregnant women have a glow. And I say it’s because you’re sweating to death.

I’m never as happy as when I’m pregnant. I literally would have 10 babies if I could!

A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy, the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first born babe, and assures it of a mother’s love

There is such a special sweetness in being able to participate in creation.

Truthfully, being pregnant is changing me as a person. Each day is part of this amazing journey that has completely shifted the focus of my life and made me reevaluate my personal and professional goals.

Feeling fat lasts nine months but the joy of becoming a mom lasts forever.

It’s an established fact. Some women can’t stand being pregnant, getting big and bloated, and hauling around a giant stomach, and some women, for reasons probably understood by Darwin, love it.

In giving birth to our babies, we may find that we give birth to new possibilities within ourselves.

You do a lot of growing up when you’re pregnant. It’s suddenly like, “Yikes. Here it is, folks. Playtime is over.

When you moved, I felt squeezed with a wild infatuation and protectiveness. We are one. Nothing, not even death, can change that.

Of course I can do this. I’m pregnant, not brain-damaged. My condition doesn’t change my personality.

I fell in love with a beautiful girl, got her pregnant, and then I got married. I wonder whatever happened to that beautiful girl I got pregnant.

Making a decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

Birthing is the most profound initiation to spirituality a woman can have.

Pregnancy is a process that invites you to surrender to the unseen force behind all life.

You are the closest, I'll ever come to magic.

A baby fills a place in your heart that you never knew was empty.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

Rich people are afraid to die.

Romance should be spontaneous, but in my career I'm totally in control.

I've been writing poems since I was in the Navy - to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.

I feel arrogant trying to give people advice.

A good deed is never lost. He who sows courtesy reaps friendship he who plants kindness gathers love pleasure bestowed on a grateful mind was never sterile but generally gratitude begets reward.

I found out that you could audition by sending a picture of yourself and some information to Newsround.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

If you stay true to your ideas, film-making becomes an inside-out, honest kind of process.

Surround yourself with people that push you to do and be better. No drama or negativity. Just higher goals and higher motivation. Good times and positive energy. No jealousy or hate. Simply bringing out the absolute best in each other.

George Morris is a legend. I was lucky enough to have been on a number of his U.S. show-jumping teams and am constantly trying to learn from him.

For the first six or eight months at Juilliard I felt paralysed. I didn't know what I was doing.