“i feel bad for her - i do. a damn shame, really, that i had to have a mother. it can’t be easy having me for a son. nothing can prepare someone for that kind of disappointment.”

“I have nothing to give anyone, really. It’s the one gift I can give that has any kind of value. It makes me feel worthy.”

“I began for the first time to really understand the loss my adoptive mother must have felt from not having her own child. I was terribly sad for her and realized that she had missed out greatly - we both had - and there was nothing I could do to change that. I could never be her natural daughter and I could never make her feel better about that loss. Guilt is a strange waste of time in the cold light of day.”

“Have you ever really wanted to be able to do something, but you came across a roadblock of some kind?You have a difficult choice. I made that choice once and it changed my whole life, by giving me experiences I never would have had if I took the easy street and had not tried.”

“For me, he can walk on water, dance in the clouds. I know he can’t, really, but what he can and can’t do pales into nothing when I look at him.”

“I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, "I told you so.”