When you banish the dragons you banish the heroes.

It is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.

Treating an identity as an illness invites real illness to make a braver stand.

In these xenophobic times, when politicians are stoking everyone's anxiety about threats from abroad, I would argue that engaging with the rest of the world is not only a luxury, in the way that travel is, but actually a moral responsibility.

Kids with Down syndrome are, by and large, quite affectionate and relatively guileless, and frequently, the attachments to them grow and deepen. And the meaning that parents find in it grows and deepens.

Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it.

We don't seek the painful experiences that hew our identities, but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences.