“Motherhood is about raising and celebrating the child you have, not the child you thought you would have. It's about understanding that he is exactly the person he is supposed to be. And that, if you're lucky, he just might be the teacher who turns you into the person you are supposed to be.”

“Suppose death had a heart to love and to release you, to whom would he turn this passion, would you chose a person from the crowd there. A person to suffer as you suffer.”

“What is love? Sometimes it's just letting yourself be who and what you are, and letting the person you're supposed to love be who and what he is too. Or maybe what and who they are.”

“If you weren't a lucky child, you didn't know you weren't lucky until you got older. And then it was all you ever thought about.”

“If you ask the great city, ‘Who is this person?,’ she will answer, ‘He is my child.”

“Each child wants to know immediately if he is a worthy person in your eyes. You cannot pretend, because the child knows all the things about himself that worry him. If you act like you like him, but ignore the things he is anxious about, it doesn't count. The child is glad you are nice to him, but deep down he figures if you really knew what he was like, you'd hate him. So your liking him without knowing him just makes him feel guilty.”