We formed an impromptu circle just so we could look at each other and memorize faces. We hardly noticed the waiting officials. We hardly noticed anything but our little family whose ties weren’t loosening at all. In fact, this impending separation only seemed to be binding us together with a double overhand knot, hard to untie and unfailing.

— Laura Anderson Kurk

If every Christian family in the United States would simply commit to pray and ask God if HE wants to use them to bless a child without a family, well, we'd change the world. If we can get the church to think about adoption not in terms of the desires of adults but in terms of the needs of children, I think we'd see on a much grander scale how God sets the lonely in families.

— Kelly Rosati

I was an infant when my parents died.Thye both were ornithologists. I've triedSo often to evoke them that todayI have a thousand parents. Sadly theyDissolve in their own virtues and recede,But certain words, chance words I hear or read,Such as 'bad heart' always to him refer,And 'cancer of the pancreas' to her.

— Vladimir Nabokov

I’m not sure I ever met an American teacher in Korea that hadn’t volunteered at an orphanage at least once—even our resident idiot could be surprisingly decent on occasion—but I’ve also visited foreign countries where children are taught hatred. I’ve seen it up close and personal. It’s antithetical to everything I believe in as a teacher. The mandate for all teachers is to instill hope, not fear and hatred.

— Tucker Elliot

The heavenly Father is the Father to the fatherless.

— Lailah Gifty Akita

A brick is a biographical film in which a young orphan brick from the wrong side of the track grows up to be one of the most important bricks in all brick kind, as it is now quite literally the cornerstone of one of America’s greatest ballparks.(Fenway).

— Nicole McKay

If you invest your time, talent, and resources, orphans around the world can have much happier and healthier lives.

— Beau Sides

Never abandon widows, widowers and orphans.

— Lailah Gifty Akita

People will rather pass by the weak, the lame, the beggars, the orphans, the tormented, the widows and take their large offerings to church, to the man of God who already has a mansion and jets , what a shallow mindedness.

— Sunday Adelaja

There,' she said. She rocked him back and forth. 'There, you foolish, beautiful boy who wants to change the world. There, there. And who could keep from loving you? Who could keep from loving a boy so brave and true?

— Kate DiCamillo