“The wedding vows are a license to be a complete jerk, with full knowledge that the person you married has agreed, no matter how large a horse's ass you are, to stay by your side until death. A fool could tell you this is a bad deal.”

“The intimacy. The deepest level of love. The knowledge that someone understands you, is rooting for you, is sharing your life.”

“All your life you was one thing. And now you can be something else if you want! Somebody completely different. You can actually start yourself over from scratch. Turn yourself into what you have always wanted to be!”

“A handwritten letter carries a lot of risk. It's a one-sided conversation that reveals the truth of the writer. Furthermore, the writer is not there to see the reaction of the person he writes to, so there's a great unknown to the process that requires a leap of faith. The writer has to choose the right words to express his sentences, and then, once he has sealed the envelope, he has to place those thoughts in the hands of someone else, trusting that the feelings will be delivered, and that the recipient will understand the writer's intent. How childish to think that could be easy.”

“It [money] doesn't have anything have anything to do with the magnificence of a person. It doesn't. What matters is what you make. Whether it's a cake for bingo night or a costume for a saint or a wall of water--whatever you pour into this life is what makes you rich.”

“He loved his family and he loved beauty. For a true Italian, those are the only two things that matter, because in the end that's what sustains you. Your family gathers around you and shores you up while the beauty uplifts you.”

“Mama always said a good family has one heartbeat. No one knows you like the people you live with, and no one will take up your cause to the outside world quite like your blood relatives.”