Cedric Bixler-Zavala 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.

We inherit the family we're born into and create the family we need.

You know, we have two families: the one we're born into, and the one that we make for ourselves afterwards.

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 go back to family: 'Ice Age' was about disparate characters rejected by their own kind. They come together to save the child. 'Despicable Me' is about redefining what a family could be. It has a visual distinction and an experimental quality.

I had no blood relatives till I made some.

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.

So the proposition that the ideal parents for any child are its biological parents is a statement with which we can all agree in the generality, but which does not apply, for one reason or another, in many particular circumstances.

Yes, I'm very close to my family. And being that close to your family, I think you also struggle with how to become your own person.

Family does not necessarily mean blood relative.

There's a lot of people in my family who've adopted children.

I never had a family, and now I do. I know I'm a very lucky guy.

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 was raised in a sort of village. I have a huge family, and I think there is strength in that. It helped me to deal with some of the complications of living in the South because I always felt like I belonged, no matter what.

I don't believe you have to be blood to be family, so I have a lot of family members.

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've always been attracted to temporary families. They tend to be lost characters.

Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most inchoate form.

Our relatives form the natural setting of our childhood. We understand ourselves best and are best understood by others through the persons who came nearest to us in our earliest years.

You may not know it, but I was adopted as a baby by my wonderful parents, Allan and Margaret Atkins of Cumberland Gap, Tenn.

I'm still really close with everyone at home and their parents - and their brothers and sisters. I was so, so, so lucky to grow up as part of a community and I don't take that for granted. I try very hard to stay part of it.

Blood relatives often have nothing to do with family, and similarly, family is about who you choose to make your life with.

As an adopted person, once you find out about that 'other' side of yourself, it's almost like you find out who you really are.

I was adopted into this incredible home, a loving, positive environment, yet I had this yearning, this kind of darkness that was also inside me.

Family is this very deep, complex thing that for most people becomes everything. It informs your entire life.