Melissa Fay Greene Quotes & Sayings

Who was going to raise 12 million children? That was what I suddenly wanted to know....Who was teaching 12 million children how to swim.....Who will tell 12 million bedtime stories....Who will wake in the night in response to 12 million nightmares....Well, as it turns out, no one. Or very few. There aren't enough adults to go around."

There is No Me Without You — Melissa Fay Greene

There's a culture in orphanages that children are eager to escape from, and it's a culture of being reared as a group and not being doted upon by parents. For any child, that's the bottom line. The fact is that a human child wants that mommy or daddy or both. — Melissa Fay Greene

There are many children who need help, and anyone who wants to reach out and adopt a child from foster care or from a Russian orphanage should reach out and do it. — Melissa Fay Greene

International adoption does not begin to solve the problems of the world's orphaned children. It's truly not the answer. At the same time, it solves a problem for a few. I think it can be a brilliant solution to the problem of adults wanting a child in their lives or wanting more children in their lives and the problem of children who want parents in their lives. — Melissa Fay Greene

You often hear attacks on international adoption as robbing a child of his or her culture, and that's both true and false. It's true that an internationally adopted child loses the rich background of history and religion and culture and language that the child was born into, but the cruel fact is that most children don't have access to the local, beautiful culture within an orphanage. — Melissa Fay Greene

So how does it happen that -- while most people instinctively try to save themselves and their families from a catastrophe -- a few slow down, look back, and suddenly reach out to strangers? Instead of fleeing in the opposite direction, a few wade into the rising waters to try to yank the drowning onto higher land. ... In the coming months and years, I would learn that -- just as there is no blood test to identify who will jump into the fray -- there is no simple biographical arc either. No resume can predict why this man or woman, at a safe remove from crisis, suddenly announces, "This is my fight. — Melissa Fay Greene

America wrestles with its obesity crisis to such an extent that Americans forget there are worse weight problems on earth than obesity. — Melissa Fay Greene

A Georgia peach, a real Georgia peach, a backyard great-grandmother's orchard peach, is as thickly furred as a sweater, and so fluent and sweet that once you bite through the flannel, it brings tears to your eyes. — Melissa Fay Greene