How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Paragraph)
Quote #7
[…] and he treated these other people as though they were his family and I weren't. So I got mad and then he got mad, and then I told him that he might just as well be dead as live the way he was living. (174)
In some ways Sonny creates an alternate family for himself, made up of people who understand his music and his way of life. While this might be good for him, it devastates the narrator. For him, family is blood, but for Sonny family is where you find it.
Quote #8
Isabel will sometimes wake me up with a low, moaning, strangled sound and I have to be quick to awaken her and hold her to me and where Isabel is weeping against me seems a mortal wound. (176)
This happens when Isabel dreams about Grace, the daughter who dies of polio. Isabel's love for her child is so great that her absence actually feels like a physical injury.
Quote #9
Then they all came together again, and Sonny was part of the family again. (235)
The narrator says this when he's watching Sonny play piano at the club. Sonny has found his way back to his musical family, and he's become a part of this family unit again. He just needed to remember what it felt like.