With children who have never said a word, parents tend to assume, for better or for worse, that there isn't any language there.

When you believe that you cannot stitch your own heart back together, go to work on the hearts of other people; there is no surer way to repair yourself than to repair them.

Depressed people cannot lead a revolution because depressed people can barely manage to get out of bed and put on their shoes and socks.

People … don't want to be cured or changed or eliminated. They want to be whoever it is that they've come to be.

I had known a couple of people who had died, but the loss of my mother contained something of the profoundly unknowable.

Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger.

I found it very comforting to see that there is no such thing as a completely normal family. People find their way through whatever the differences may be.