“I'm a morning person: if I don't get up, put the coffee on and get to my desk by 8, the day has already lost a lot of its promise.”
- Jennifer Gilmore
“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.”
“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.”
“The world is a dysfunctional place in so many ways. It is unstable. So even though that chaos can be reflected in our own homes, I suppose we have to fight that by creating our own versions of safety, which can also turn into ignoring the state of the world.”
“I want to say that, in general, when it works, open adoption is great.”
“I know publishing now more as an author than with occasional peaks inside those elite offices than as an industry insider. It was difficult publishing a novel the first time around, while working behind the scenes, knowing all that has to happen to make a book a success and to still make the leap as an author.”
“I think publishing's strength is also its weakness. It's got such a rich and celebrated history as an industry. For the most part, publishing people are incredibly creative, business is done based on the strength of relationships, and the product being peddled is books.”
“What is it about the blank page that makes me want to hurl myself into a game of solitaire? I ask myself these kinds of questions while I'm playing solitaire.”
“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.”
“As writers, we don't just need to write about poverty or war or the immigrant experience.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“While I am very much Jewish 'identified,' I'm not a very religious person.”
