“You have one family, Charley. For good or bad. You have one family. You can’t trade them in. You can’t lie to them. You can’t run two at once, substituting back and forth.“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.”

“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.”

“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.”

“Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.”

“This is a story about a family and, as there is a ghost involved, you might cal it a ghost story. But every family is a ghost story. The dead sit at out tables long after they have gone.”

“The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish’.”

“The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning - birth - and we all have the same end - death. So how different can we be?Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.”