The birth mother is placing the baby out of love. I still believe that. Well, the ones we've dealt with who were actually pregnant, anyway.

You think the worst is behind you, but it’s never behind you. In fact, saying something is the worst does not leave room for all the bad stuff that can follow it. You say the pain is nine, but you mean ten. You leave room.

I had the worst feeling, when I hung up, that I had missed the purpose of our conversation, that we both had. We had been apart for so long and no longer knew how to speak, other than as strangers. How are you feeling? we said, but what we meant was, Where are you? who are you now? Are you still in there?

I will say, in open adoption, all these choices you make about race, about the amount of mental illness you can deal with, about special needs and physical maladies, you have to lay all this out there before you know anybody's story.

I think that when the world feels safe and secure, we probably feel more that way in our personal lives. What goes on in the world affects us, unequivocally.

I wanted a baby of color, to be honest, because I wasn't attached to the idea that I look like the biological mother. I liked the idea of the adoption being clear; it was and is not something I am interested in hiding.

I feel like if writers used writing as therapy we'd have a ton of happy writers.

It would be a lie to say that people are coming to adoption with joy at all times. Hope, perhaps, but it would be disingenuous to say that every part coming to an adoption isn't seriously grieving.

My father is an economist who specialized in foreign food policy, and my mother worked for AID, a branch of the State Department, so food in regards to world affairs was talked about a lot.

My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.