Since I was five, I've known that I was adopted, which is a politically correct term for being clueless about one's own origins.

In America right now, the people who talk about race the most are people of color - and if we are going to move the needle forward, it's WHITE people who need to acknowledge their role in racism.

She stares at me for a moment, and then she bursts out laughing. “You haven’t seen his perfect little wife and his perfect little girls. Believe me, Oliver, I’m not the great love of his life, the one he’ll never forget.” “You are to me,” I say.

Why is it that only in the very beginnings of a relationship are you aware of the heat coming from inside a person, of the number of inches you would have to move for your shoulders to brush as if it were an accident?

She understood what it was like to stand right in front of people you loved, even though they could not see you.

And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.

The right idea is the one you can't stop thinking about; the one that's in your head first thing in the morning.