“Once upon a time, each of us was somebody's kid. Everyone had a father, even if he never provided anything more than his seed.Everyone had a mother, even if she had to leave us on a stranger's doorstep.No matter how we're eventually raised, all of our stories begin the exact same way.They all end the same, too.”

“Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father's place. That's not him, we said to our mother, That's not him, but our mother no longer seemed to hear us..."Did you..." she said. "Every day," he replied. Then he got down on his knees and he took us into his arms...”

“Thirteen years of friendship had bonded us together more thoroughly than if we had been born of the same mother. Even at this late stage, I was unwilling to let him go.”

“Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.”

“Johnny Cash had all of the same talents and problems as Elvis - a poor upbringing in the rural South exposure to gospel music throughout his childhood a penchant for drug abuse...they had the same sort of influencing experiences but Johnny' Cash's problematic relationship was with his father not his mother. If he had had the mommy issues that Elvis had instead of a compelling need to prove himself to his father, he wouldn't have been the badass man in black, the guy in Folsom Prison watching the train roll by. Elvis was a lot of things but even with the karate and the gunplay he was more unstable than badass.”

“Once giving way to tears, she wept bitterly for all that she had lost, and all that she must lose so soon. Her mother had had the courage to leave everything she loved and to come out here with her father; she in turn ought to show just that same courage about going back, but she could not find it in her heart.”