The Secret Adoption Quotes

“It’s not easy to forgive—especially in a society obsessed with presentism and castigating past mistakes. The slightest error gets you canceled, forgotten, and erased from history. It feels like there’s no context anymore, just judgment.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir

“As a young man, I was cocksure, unable to spool the common thread tying together all faiths—a desire for peace, happiness, and purpose. Yet the fountain that sprang from the well of natural selection couldn’t quench my thirst. I was desperate to taste a different elixir.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir

“We knew so little of the cosmos when the Dead Sea Scrolls were written. Why did the universe continue to bury its secrets so deep, unbeknownst to us, revealing them only at a time and place of its choosing? Was there not a kernel of truth to it?”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir

“I’d watched that tragic scene up close too many times—troubled young men like me—their fates sealed by loving yet misguided parents. Draping over the mirrors reflecting the turmoil within their children’s souls made them undoubtedly more vulnerable to their monsters.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir

“Something about Israel was speaking to me, planting a seed of faith that would one day prove more fruitful than anything I’d ever harvest. It was the beginning of my most important journey, one I wouldn’t fully appreciate until I had far more to lose in this life than I had to gain.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir

“Having never smoked, I hacked after inhaling. The taste was bitter, a flavor marking the twilight of my childhood.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir

“These were the days of the big smokey rooms overflowing with recovering drunks of every race, creed, and color. I relished the opportunity to accompany Mom to her meetings. You could sit in the back of those rooms and hear the sort of Frankenstein tales even Mary Shelley couldn’t have written.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir

“It’s the nature of tragedy. The emotional upheaval of loss blurs a survivor’s memory. And their grief, from denial to bouts of anger, guilt, bargaining, and ultimately acceptance, often ends with a little piece of them dying too.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir

“Our parents were the types to cover our eyes in theaters when movies got violent and our ears if a conversation became explicit. They didn’t want us to grow up so fast that we’d forget what it was like when the only monsters in life were the ones under the bed.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir

“As days passed, my worldview became a mélange of their arcane narratives, stitched together like a quilt—easy to wrap yourself in but too flimsy to keep you warm.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir