The Story of Arthur Truluv (Mason, #1)

by Elizabeth Berg

We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars—everybody

Arthur thinks that, above all, aging means the abandonment of criticism and the taking on of compassionate acceptance.

there is a scent the hounds get excited by, and the fox can’t separate that scent from itself.

One of the things Maddy has of her mother’s is a collection of Tori Amos CDs. Maddy listens to those CDs a lot, and she’s read about Tori. She draws comfort from a quote she read that was attributed to the singer: “What girls do to each other is beyond description. No Chinese torture comes close.”

She tries to be a good Christian. Jesus went around forgiving everyone, though her personal belief is that he went a little too far with that business.

What is it that makes a family? Certainly no document does, no legal pronouncement or accident of birth. No,

real families come from choices we make about who we want to be bound to, and the ties to such families live in our hearts. Beneath the quote, Maddy has written, Thank you for inviting my father, who is not my real family, but to whom I am also tied.

He kisses the headstone, right on the N for Nola Corrine, the Beauty Queen. “I’ll love you forever in darkness and sun, I’ll love you past when my whole sweet life is done,” he says.