I came to the place of my birth and cried, ''The friends of my youth, where are they?'' And echo answered, ''Where are they?''

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

What is this talked-of mystery of birth but being mounted bareback on the earth?

The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.

Birth and death are so closely related that one could not destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes creation possible.

When we are born we cry that we are come.. to this great stage of fools.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt; helpless, naked, piping loud, like a fiend hid in a cloud.