Family Values

From Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta,

We are all really good at pretending we are a normal family, and somehow us pretending all at once is a big part of what makes us feel like a family. It is like a willed self-delusion. Or maybe you can lie to yourself, that's a self-delusion, but if you have a delusion about several people, if you all share in this delusion, that isn't a self-delusion, is it? That is a family.