My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories

You're a kaleidoscope, you change every time I look away.

He says presents aren't important, but I think they are - not because of how much they cost, but for the opportunity they provide to say I understand you.

Would you rather be great at something you like, or just okay at something you love?

I guess I don't really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to explode, but I don't know where to aim it yet.

I need you to be my person. I need to see you. And hear you. I need you to stay alive. And I need you to stop kissing other people just because they're standing next to you when the ball drops.

But people don't need to remember how it felt to be happy and safe in the past. They need to have hope that they can get there again in the future.

Sometimes I felt like I was waiting for my life to begin and more than anything, in that moment, I wanted to force some kind of beginning. I wanted things to be different than usual. I wanted to bend reality.

Shame leads to secrets, and secrets lead to lies, and lies ruin everything.

Noel was her very best friend - even if she wasn't his. Noel was her person.

Love was love. But she hoped that he was not a dragon.

We all love and we all lose and we go on loving just the same.

I am here, and he is here, and everything I need to know is that I will hold him and he will hold me until I am warm again, until I know I belong. (Your Temporary Santa)

Not that kind of cheating," Mags said. "More like...skipping ahead. If you like someone, you should have to make an effort. You should have to get to know the person--you should have to work for that first kiss.

Christmas Eve is my favorite... I think the anticipation is more fun than anything else. I kind of lost that. The idea that something - food, traditions, an arbitrary date on the calendar - can be special because we decide it should be. We make it special. Not just for ourselves, but for others.

I sang because that is what I do when I am happy and when I'm sad. I sang because it is who I am when I am being the best possible version of me.

And there - when he smiles, his whole faces lights up. It's like his other expressions are placeholders.

Sweetheart, when you lose someone, you lose a little bit of yourself, too. And that missing piece? Sometimes you have to lose the rest of yourself to find it.

If you let a single life event define you then all you need to change things--if you want them to change--is another.

She wanted to be free, and if she could never be free, at least she wanted to be brave - brave enough not to sell herself, no matter what the payment, or the cost of refusing.

You can't undo loss. You can't unmake a mistake. (What The Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth?)

The door opens with a rusted jingle, and an animatronic Santa insults my moral virtue three times. Ho, ho, ho.

The feeling it gave me was an odd combination of weightless self-pity and excitement. I understood my life was meaningless, and this knowledge freed me up to accomplish absolutely anything.

She was the goddess of...herself. And he could not look away from her.

I stayed there on the floor like that for a long, long time. Eating and crying. Crying and eating.

Thr rareness, the specialness, of North. Of this night. She wished it could last forever. (It's a yuletide miracle, Charlie Brown)

His eyes follow me everywhere, and we keep sharing smiles that feel like secrets.(Kiersten White)

I am worried about being in love, because it invelves asking so much. I am worried my life will never fit into his.

Some kinds of misery make you hate the world, but some kinds make you hate yourself, and--butter and cheese not withstanding--Neve had no question that Spear was the latter.

Christmas is supposed to be this time when everyone is nice to one another and forgives one another and all that, but the true meaning of Christmas is presents. And in the real world, Santa’s not fair. Rich kids get everything and poor kids get secondhand crap their parents bust their asses to afford. It costs money just to sit on Santa’s lap.