My mother is a realist, and she's had biological and adoptive children, and she said it's no different: No matter what, they're putting a stranger into your arms. You don't know them yet.

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Ah, Evelyn and Vivian, I love you both, I love you for your sad lives, the empty misery of your coming home at dawn. You too are alone, but you are not like Arturo Bandini, who is neither fish, fowl nor good red herring. So have your champagne, because I love you both, and you too, Vivian, even if your mouth looks like it had been dug out with raw fingernails and your old child's eyes swim in blood written like mad sonnets.

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Even as a child I had a strong relationship with yearning and desire. And loss. Those things spoke to me.

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All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia ― W.C. Fields

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Children, be worried when they call you America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they've done to the other natural resources?

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I don't know what people are scared of...maybe they think their children will be influenced by gay marriage, but I've got to tell you, I was raised by two heterosexuals. Everywhere I looked - heterosexuals. And they did not influence me. It's time we love people for who they are and let them love who they want.

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When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.

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You can't blend in when you were born to stand out. — R. J. Palacio

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Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.

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There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

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