“I'm so lucky to have a family, adopted or not! I'm so lucky to be alive!" Judy Ellis Taylor tells her three school-age girls.... They roll their eyes.”

“The abscess is a distant memory. The pain is gone. This dinner with her hosts and her health-care team, this week of seeing another country and another culture, this time of being in demand, this moment is reality. I am a lucky girl, (Judy) thinks.”

“Life is what we make it, so I'm making mine with chocolate.”

“So there you have it, the extent of my charms: brown hair and eyes like unbarfed chocolate. I'm a lucky girl." -Max”

“God give me strength God give me faithIn you & in myself In my unclear future And in life itself”

“I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend Lucky to have been where I have been Lucky to be coming home again”

“Even Dad likes it," said Caddy, and her father agreed that he did. In a way. Being a broad-minded, tolerant, artistic sort of person. Or so people told him..."Oh, yes?" said Saffron, rolling her eyes."Yes," said Bill, sounding a little bit peeved. "So you thank your lucky stars, my girl, because in some families you would have come home to very big trouble! A nose stud! At your age! If you come down with blood poisoning, don't blame me!”