“In a family, what isn't spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.”

“I wonder if what makes a family a family isn't doing everything right all the time but, instead, giving a second chance to the people you love who do things wrong.”

“He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about.”

“This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.”

“But what was family? Surely more than genes, eye color, flesh. Family was story: truth and struggle and retribution. Family was time. If he had learned anything it was the family was not so much what you were given as what you were able to maintain.”

“Maybe this is what it's like for all only children: To love the family that isn't almost as much as the one that is.”