“When you experience the joy of bringing joy into someone else's life, then you know what joy is.”

“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.”

“The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being.”

“You never know what someone is dealing with behind closed doors. You only know what you see or what you think you see.”

“...the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction.”

“It is believed that as the cells are being knitted together to form a new human life, before there are language and words, memories are formed of the time in utero. Whether it was a good experience or a bad one, whether the mother was overjoyed or contemplating abortion, the baby picks up those feelings. They remain with us inside our bodies in the form of physical memory. It is becoming common knowledge that babies in the womb respond to music, light and sound, so it makes sense that a baby would also respond to its mother's stresses and joys.”

“When you feel someone else's pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you know you really loved them.”