Twice Born

I just finished the book Twice Born, by Betty Jean Lifton. These are some of the sentences that made me think the most... for better or for worse.

"I learned to accept that the branch must be separated from the tree" (p4).

"I went into the labyrinth and emerged with what I sought - my story" (p5).

"An adoptee's natural parents never completely lose the aura of fantasy, both positive and negative, which once surrounded them, even after they are found" (p9).

"... because occupations are something like adoptions: no matter how benign or well-meaning, they obscure the subject's origins, alter the identity" (p68).

"Adoption is biologically alien to the unadopted" (p81).

"I found myself weeping uncontrollably for I knew not what" (p99).

"A recorded existence is a real one" (p105).

"She was my mother physically, but what is being a mother" (p143)?

"I was beginning to feel much like those concentration-camp victims, prisoners of war, and the 'brainwashed' who maintain that only those who have shared their experience can possibly understand them" (p153).

"Every movement needs such a fanatical force pushing it to the outer limits if it is to get off the ground" (p176).

"Is it the orphan wind blowing through me" (p183)?

"Just as death at an early age assures a person eternal youth, so too does adoption keep one eternally young, helpless, infantilized" (p191).

"Does the adopted person go on the tree she was placed on biologically or on the tree onto which she was transplanted" (p196)?

"... the adoption triangle is set up now, everyone is victimized" (p264).

"It all comes down to the fact that we have to develop a different sense of parenthood" (p270).