“Fang snorted in disbelief. "On one hand, we have a mythical nice family that wants to adopt me. On the other, we have a gang of insane scientists desperate to do genetic experiments on innocent children. Guess which hand I get dealt?”

“The family we choose for ourselves is more important than the one we were born into; that people have to earn our respect and trust, not have it handed to them simply because of genetics.”

“None of us have any control over the deck or the hand we've been dealt. What we do have is total responibility as to how we play the hand.”

“In normal families, unbroken families, the mother and the father are like two hands cupped together, and held by those hands are the children. In my family, the hands have pulled apart and the children have been dropped. If one parent isn’t looking after you, they just assume the other one is. You find out you don’t really belong anywhere.”

“He gives my hand a tight squeeze, but that desperation, that urgency between us is gone. No insecurities. Max and Fang. Fang and Max. No longer a question. We just are.”

“When I behold other people, who are of course the children of some family or other, and think of my own children, and of myself...I am astonished at how sensible, well-behaved, practical, courteous, and predictable these other children are. The other children are so easy about the whole business of being who they are, being in the world, and getting along. Whereas with us it is an awful fight, all the way. I am left with the conclusion that we are quite probably crazy, but somehow not in a way that compels commitment. We get over our rampages before society or clinical insanity charges in on us. I can think of very few of us who are not nuts. And that's not at our worst, that's pretty much as we always are. We find fault with everything. The world stinks, and even long after we have reconciled ourselves to that truth, we still regret it, and now and then even rage against it. Running through the various branches of the family I fail to find one branch which might be said to be nice- ordinary, sober, adjusted, willing, courteous, undemanding, charming, practical, predictable, and all of the other things nice people are. Lunacy runs straight down the middle of every branch of my family. We have nobody who is not some kind of nut. What did it? How did it happen? Well, there's no answer, of course.”