“What happened to my family should never happen to any parents. But it will. And this book is for them.”

“You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”

“People are going to say, ‘Well, it’s not very truthful.’ But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.”

“It's like my whole life never happened,When I see you, it's as if I never had a thought.I know this dream, it might be crazy,But it's the only one I've got.”

“The worth of things can't be measured by what they cost but by what the cost you to get it, that if anything costs you your faith or your family, then the price is too high, and that there are some things that will never wear out.”

“Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love PoemMy left hand will live longer than my right. The riversof my palms tell me so.Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finishat the same time. I thinkpraying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I thinkstaying up and waitingfor paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension thisis exactly what's happening,it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamicsof mournful Whistlers,the audible sorrow and beta decay of Old Battersea Bridge.I like the idea of differenttheres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,a Bronx where people talklike violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehowkind, perhaps in the nookof a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayedanyone. Here I havetwo hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your backto rest my cheek against,your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.My hands are webbedlike the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezedsomething in the wombbut couldn't hang on. One of those other worldsor a life I feltpassing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's bellyshe had to scream out.Here, when I say I never want to be without you,somewhere else I am sayingI never want to be without you again. And when I touch youin each of the places we meet,in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dyingand resurrected.When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,in each place and forever.”

“Jeff Hudson started me on a path that was key, and as life goes on it's become a mantra to me. It's that you're born into a family, your family of origin, and you're stuck with it. Once I recognized that, it freed me up to have a different kind of family: a family of choice. The people I surround myself with, spend holidays with, look to for support and comfort and validation -- that's my family of choice.”