Holly

“[He] put a tape on the car stereo and when I heard Neil Young singing, I shouted for him to turn it off, saying I was allergic to that whiny goddamn bastard.”
― Nadia Bozak, Orphan Love

“It's piles and piles of emotional homework forever if you ever want to qualify as a grown-up”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Emergency Contact

“Happiness is pure kitsch; we come into the world to suffer and learn.”
― Isabel Allende, La suma de los días

“A family isn’t simply a passive inheritance. It’s defined by the bonds its members choose, and not just the bonds assigned by genetics. Each time a family member joins their life to a biological stranger in marriage, adoption or through having children, a new clan joins itself to our family tree at the junction point of the union. New ancestors are fused with ours. New descendants are sired by the mingling of separate genetic codes. Without this chosen love our gene pool would stagnate. Without this new family, an assigned inheritance couldn’t continue. Genes might specify the way we’re put together, but without our human will to love beyond those specifications, a family can’t be all the things it might be.”
― Stephen McGann, Flesh and Blood: A History of My Family in Seven Maladies