Ann Patchett Quotes

I know I will never be able to replace my parents, but over the years I have realized that you aren't able to choose your own family.

You don't have to give birth to someone to have a family. We're all family - an extended family.

Because I didn't have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them - but it was not my family.

I have six siblings but grew up an only child. I was adopted by my aunt and uncle.

When I came into the Perry family, it was just kind of one of those deals where they were the only family I had.

I'm adopted by my uncle and aunt, who I look to as my parents and people who really did everything they could to put me on the right path. I'm really grateful to them.

When I was born, I was given to my uncle and aunt to raise as their kid because they couldn't have kids.

Sometimes 'Frances' can be about finding the missing piece, trying to look for biological family as opposed to maybe realizing your family is whoever is around you at the time.

I was interested with exploring the idea of who gets to be in possession of the land - how it's sometimes impossible to go back home, how family can be the thing that drags you down.

We already had an adopted daughter, 10-year-old Courtney, from my previous marriage. To me, there is no difference between 'natural' and 'adopted.' My own childhood showed me that when it comes to loving your kids, concepts like that don't apply. I was the oldest of six, and three of my siblings were adopted. Mom and Dad even took in foster children. 'There are no limits to how much you can love,' Dad always said.

In 1944 James Arthur and Minnie Susan were added to the Marx household.

I don't have children, but I have 17 nieces and nephews, and they more than make up for anything that I can do. I have a stepdaughter, and I adore her to pieces, and I think about adoption. There are so many kids at different ages and stages that need families.

My father had kicked me out of his house at the height of an argument over an opinion difference. He had become so enraged. He told me never to come back, and that was all the severance it took.

I would say the dumbest thing I have heard is that my dad isn't my real dad.

Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.

Adopted kids are such a pain - you have to teach them how to look like you.

My stepfather and my mother, I love them to death.

All I wanted to do was please my adopted family.

I love kids, and I love having had this second chance to have a family.

I've got my feet on the ground because I've got a lovely family waiting for me when I get home, even though they're not my flesh and blood. I haven't got children. That's my only regret, I suppose.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

No matter our background, we all have crazy families.

In one sense, the stories I read betrayed me. Too few gave me back my mirror image. Fewer still spoke to, or acknowledged, the existence of the problems I faced as a black foster child from a dysfunctional and badly broken home.

There will be no 'Mommie Dearest' in the lives of my children, and no books like the one the Crosby boy wrote about Bing, or Bette Davis's daughter has written. My children love me very much, and they are loved.

When I moved to London at age 16, tired of the shuffle around other people's houses and ready to live on my own, I met my English brother and sister, who instantly claimed me as family.