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Top 25 Nicole Chung Quotes (2025 Update)

Nicole Chung Quote: “As my thoughts reached out to them, all at once I could envision hundreds of gossamer-thin threads of history and love, curiosity and memory, built up slowly across the time and space between us – a web of connections too delicate to be seen or touched, too strong to be completely severed.”

1. “As my thoughts reached out to them, all at once I could envision hundreds of gossamer-thin threads of history and love, curiosity and memory, built up slowly across the time and space between us – a web of connections too delicate to be seen or touched, too strong to be completely severed.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “How do you learn to cherish yourself, your life, when grief has made it unrecognizable? I am starting to feel that we do so not by trying to fill a void that can never be filled but by living as best as we can in this strange, yawning terrain our loved ones have left behind, exploring its jagged boundaries and learning to see it as something new.”

2. “How do you learn to cherish yourself, your life, when grief has made it unrecognizable? I am starting to feel that we do so not by trying to fill a void that can never be filled but by living as best as we can in this strange, yawning terrain our loved ones have left behind, exploring its jagged boundaries and learning to see it as something new.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “To be a hero, I thought, you had to be beautiful and adored. To be beautiful and adored, you had to be white. That there were millions of Asian girls like me out there in the world, starring in their own dramas large and small, had not yet occurred to me, as I had neither lived nor seen it.”

3. “To be a hero, I thought, you had to be beautiful and adored. To be beautiful and adored, you had to be white. That there were millions of Asian girls like me out there in the world, starring in their own dramas large and small, had not yet occurred to me, as I had neither lived nor seen it.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “But one thing has not wavered or changed: I am still my adoptive parents’ daughter. No matter what, no matter our differences, they will always be my parents, the ones who wanted me when no one else did.”

4. “But one thing has not wavered or changed: I am still my adoptive parents’ daughter. No matter what, no matter our differences, they will always be my parents, the ones who wanted me when no one else did.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “As we left the birth center, I couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling that our baby was destined to inherit a half-empty family tree. I wasn’t even a mother yet, and already the best I could offer was far from good enough.”

5. “As we left the birth center, I couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling that our baby was destined to inherit a half-empty family tree. I wasn’t even a mother yet, and already the best I could offer was far from good enough.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “It felt petty and wrong, like I was assigning blame to something I was supposed to be grateful for.”

6. “It felt petty and wrong, like I was assigning blame to something I was supposed to be grateful for.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “Today, when I’m asked, I often say that I no longer consider adoption – individual adoptions, or adoption as a practice – in terms of right or wrong. I urge people to go into it with their eyes open, recognizing how complex it truly is; I encourage adopted people to tell their stories, our stories, and let no one else define these experiences for us.”

7. “Today, when I’m asked, I often say that I no longer consider adoption – individual adoptions, or adoption as a practice – in terms of right or wrong. I urge people to go into it with their eyes open, recognizing how complex it truly is; I encourage adopted people to tell their stories, our stories, and let no one else define these experiences for us.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “I finally understood what my birth parents did not: my adoption was hard, and complicated, but it was not a tragedy. It was not my fault, and it wasn’t theirs, either. It was the easiest way to solve just one of too many problems.”

8. “I finally understood what my birth parents did not: my adoption was hard, and complicated, but it was not a tragedy. It was not my fault, and it wasn’t theirs, either. It was the easiest way to solve just one of too many problems.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “Family lore given to us as children has such hold over us, such staying power. It can form the bedrock of another kind of faith, one to rival any religion, informing our beliefs about ourselves, and our families, and our place in the world.”

9. “Family lore given to us as children has such hold over us, such staying power. It can form the bedrock of another kind of faith, one to rival any religion, informing our beliefs about ourselves, and our families, and our place in the world.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “The belief that I’d actually been wanted from the beginning, paired with the sure knowledge that my adoptive parents loved me, allowed me to grasp at self-worth, despite my doubts; to grow up and live my life free of the darkest feelings of abandonment.”

10. “The belief that I’d actually been wanted from the beginning, paired with the sure knowledge that my adoptive parents loved me, allowed me to grasp at self-worth, despite my doubts; to grow up and live my life free of the darkest feelings of abandonment.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “Yet I’ve also found common ground sharing my story with people who, while not adopted, have distant or absent parents. Some of them, too, seek reconnection and reunion, with complicated results. A year or two after I met my birth father, I became friends with a woman who had grown up without her father, only to look for him as an adult. She seemed to understand and relate to my story as much as a fellow adoptee might.”

11. “Yet I’ve also found common ground sharing my story with people who, while not adopted, have distant or absent parents. Some of them, too, seek reconnection and reunion, with complicated results. A year or two after I met my birth father, I became friends with a woman who had grown up without her father, only to look for him as an adult. She seemed to understand and relate to my story as much as a fellow adoptee might.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “I doubted it had ever occurred to my adoptive parents that I might want to learn anything about Korea. Had they ever suggested a language class, I’m sure I would have complained – it was bad enough that I couldn’t change the way I looked; did I really have to emphasize my differences by learning a language no one else I knew could speak?”

12. “I doubted it had ever occurred to my adoptive parents that I might want to learn anything about Korea. Had they ever suggested a language class, I’m sure I would have complained – it was bad enough that I couldn’t change the way I looked; did I really have to emphasize my differences by learning a language no one else I knew could speak?”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “When you are growing up adopted, people like to tell you how lucky you are. Having learned the truth about my birth family, I couldn’t disagree. But it wasn’t so simple: there are many different kinds of luck; many different ways to be blessed or cursed.”

13. “When you are growing up adopted, people like to tell you how lucky you are. Having learned the truth about my birth family, I couldn’t disagree. But it wasn’t so simple: there are many different kinds of luck; many different ways to be blessed or cursed.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “But long after the papers are signed and the original familial bonds are severed, adoption has a way of isolating the adoptee. For me, it had always been this way: a wide sea seemed to separate the lone island of my experience from the well-mapped continents on which other people, other families, resided.”

14. “But long after the papers are signed and the original familial bonds are severed, adoption has a way of isolating the adoptee. For me, it had always been this way: a wide sea seemed to separate the lone island of my experience from the well-mapped continents on which other people, other families, resided.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “In most published stories, adoptees still aren’t the adults, the ones with power or agency or desires that matter – we’re the babies in the orphanage; we’re the kids who don’t quite fit in; we are struggling souls our adoptive families fought for, objects of hope, symbols of tantalizing potential and parental magnanimity and wishes fulfilled. We are wanted, found, or saved, but never grown, never entirely our own.”

15. “In most published stories, adoptees still aren’t the adults, the ones with power or agency or desires that matter – we’re the babies in the orphanage; we’re the kids who don’t quite fit in; we are struggling souls our adoptive families fought for, objects of hope, symbols of tantalizing potential and parental magnanimity and wishes fulfilled. We are wanted, found, or saved, but never grown, never entirely our own.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “The adoption story I’d heard so often growing up was supposed to remake me, give me everything I needed, make me feel whole. In the end, though, real growth and healing came from another kind of radical change – from finding the courage to question what I’d always been told; to seek and discover and tell another kind of story. And I know my children will benefit from all the things I will pass on to them now, all the truths I’m able to share.”

16. “The adoption story I’d heard so often growing up was supposed to remake me, give me everything I needed, make me feel whole. In the end, though, real growth and healing came from another kind of radical change – from finding the courage to question what I’d always been told; to seek and discover and tell another kind of story. And I know my children will benefit from all the things I will pass on to them now, all the truths I’m able to share.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “Now, when I considered all the factors, both known and unknown, that led to my adoption, I could no longer believe that anyone had planned it. I had always been told that my birth parents wished they had been able to keep me. If that were true, why didn’t God care what they wanted?”

17. “Now, when I considered all the factors, both known and unknown, that led to my adoption, I could no longer believe that anyone had planned it. I had always been told that my birth parents wished they had been able to keep me. If that were true, why didn’t God care what they wanted?”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “But having never talked about race with anyone before, I couldn’t have strung together the words to describe what I was seeing – or not seeing – just as I couldn’t have told anyone why it suddenly mattered.”

18. “But having never talked about race with anyone before, I couldn’t have strung together the words to describe what I was seeing – or not seeing – just as I couldn’t have told anyone why it suddenly mattered.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “Sometimes the adoption – the abandonment, as I could not help but think of it when I was very young – upset me more; sometimes my differences did but mostly, it was both at once, race and adoption, linked parts of my identity that set me apart from everyone else in my orbit. I could neither change nor deny these facts, so I worked to reconcile myself to them. To tamp down the stirring anger or confusion when that proved impossible, time and time again.”

19. “Sometimes the adoption – the abandonment, as I could not help but think of it when I was very young – upset me more; sometimes my differences did but mostly, it was both at once, race and adoption, linked parts of my identity that set me apart from everyone else in my orbit. I could neither change nor deny these facts, so I worked to reconcile myself to them. To tamp down the stirring anger or confusion when that proved impossible, time and time again.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “When we arrived at the home of our childbirth instructor, Brenda, she was arranging candles in an earthen vessel filled with sand. Brenda’s son, who had shown us into the room, cleared his throat to get his mother’s attention, then retreated with the quick step of a middle-school-aged boy in the same room as a gigantic poster of a uterus.”

20. “When we arrived at the home of our childbirth instructor, Brenda, she was arranging candles in an earthen vessel filled with sand. Brenda’s son, who had shown us into the room, cleared his throat to get his mother’s attention, then retreated with the quick step of a middle-school-aged boy in the same room as a gigantic poster of a uterus.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “And no one, no matter how smart or experienced, could expect to look at a tiny baby and know exactly who or what she would grow up to be.”

21. “And no one, no matter how smart or experienced, could expect to look at a tiny baby and know exactly who or what she would grow up to be.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “But to be adopted is to know only the rewritten story, one of an infinite number possible.”

22. “But to be adopted is to know only the rewritten story, one of an infinite number possible.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “He said he always felt that Dad loved people beyond their merits, a sentiment to which I could relate; while Dad and I sometimes disappointed each other, our love was never in question, and he usually thought better of me than I thought of myself.”

23. “He said he always felt that Dad loved people beyond their merits, a sentiment to which I could relate; while Dad and I sometimes disappointed each other, our love was never in question, and he usually thought better of me than I thought of myself.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “I shook my head a little, not disagreeing so much as acknowledging the impossibility of ever knowing: it was hard to say, three decades later, what would have been best for the largest number of people.”

24. “I shook my head a little, not disagreeing so much as acknowledging the impossibility of ever knowing: it was hard to say, three decades later, what would have been best for the largest number of people.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “These people weren’t my parents. I knew that. But they seemed meant to be parents, if anyone was, and I could already tell they had the best of intentions. They wanted a child badly enough to open up to a near-stranger, make themselves vulnerable and lay their fears bare. Their longing for a baby to love, for things to work out in their favor, couldn’t help but move me.”

25. “These people weren’t my parents. I knew that. But they seemed meant to be parents, if anyone was, and I could already tell they had the best of intentions. They wanted a child badly enough to open up to a near-stranger, make themselves vulnerable and lay their fears bare. Their longing for a baby to love, for things to work out in their favor, couldn’t help but move me.”

— Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung Quote: “They would never be my refuge, my first call in a crisis. Even if you found your birth family, how could you ever be certain they would stick around? How could you think of them as your real family when they hadn’t been there all along?”

26. “They would never be my refuge, my first call in a crisis. Even if you found your birth family, how could you ever be certain they would stick around? How could you think of them as your real family when they hadn’t been there all along?”

— Nicole Chung

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