“There's someone out there who needs you. You must live your life so that person can find you.”

“To be an artist it is not necessary to make a living from our creations. Nor is it necessary to have work hanging in fine museums or the praise of critics. To be an artist it is necessary to live with our eyes wide open, to breath in the colors of mountain and sky, to know the sound of leaves rustling, the smell of snow, the texture of bark. To be an artist is to notice every beautiful and tragic thing, to cry freely, to collect experience and shape it into forms that others can share.”

“The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire.”

“To any adopted person searching for help and support, I saw this: find people who really know and understand the adoption experience and stay away from people who think they know. Avoid like the plague those who are just interested in being a part of your reunion stories because it sounds like fun. Be open to professional counselling to understand and help process all the conflicting emotions you may feel so that your reunion can be the best possible experience; so that you, as an adoptee, can pass on to your children the joy in their arrival that you never felt was connected to your own.”

“Everyone has to act out of character sometimes. It's like taking your clothes off: you feel free without your character but very naked, unprotected. Unfinished. So you get dressed again- you put on yourself-and then you know who you are.”

“You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern.”

“‎You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.”