"To raise a son, not from her own body, for thirty years—nobody accepts this easily."

"Her name is Rita. It comes from a poem by a well-known poet of Palestine."

"The last thing I heard was the voice of my children playing, then everything went black"

"I cannot forget a minute of that day."

"All day I am thinking: your son, your son. You need to do something for your son."

"I’ve closed my social media. From Gaza it’s all bad news.”

"My whole life people have said to me: ‘You are too kind, too sensitive.’”

"We had one chance to leave Gaza, early in the war. At that time our lives had grown very difficult.”

"When I entered Gaza the Israeli military had a rule: I was only allowed to bring in three kilos of food.”

"Max had two mothers. We found a sperm donor and I gave birth to him through IVF.”

“I’ve been on a mission for seventeen years. It’s my holy grail.”

“I have two birthdays.”

“Sebastian was diagnosed when he was twenty months old.”

“She came back from soccer practice one day, limping and crying.”

“The fundamental question of cancer biology has always been the same: ‘What makes a cancer cell a cancer cell?’”

“Nobody ever tells each other the truth around here.”

“Her tumor was the size of a grapefruit.”

“Twelve thousand kids per year get cancer in the United States.”

“We’re doing fine. We see a lot of psychologists in the hospital.”