“Your generation has no sense of responsibility to a group, a calling higher than your own. You treat random friends like family and family like strangers. You want to dither your life away, pursuing one pleasure after another. That is not a path; that is a waste of life.”

“The purpose of family is to preserve life,' Aunt Patti said. 'We treat family members the way we're supposed to treat everyone on the planet.”

“Look at the path ahead of you. I want you to keep your eyes dead ahead, stay on path, and not take your eyes off your end goal. Following that path with focus and dedication will be your best route to the top.”

“Love is hard. It's forgiving your best friend when you want to shove her away.”

“Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!”

“Darling, family can be the very devil in disguise. More powerful than any drug, more alluring than any sin. They can demand a loyalty that will rip your heart out and chew it up without the thought of an apology.”

“I try to imagine keeping something like that a secret for my whole life. It would be like always wearing a mask over your face, which everyone believed was the real you. You would be the only person who knew it wasn't--and who knew that you could never take it off.”