The Chocolate Kiss

She loved sinking into her bed on evenings like this, but apparently she shouldn't, because it worried her aunts, who thought she ought to be out dancing. It worried her a little bit, too, because what if they were right, and because sometimes a great loneliness welled up in her and threatened all the dams she built to hold it back. You couldn't cure loneliness by wallowing in it, up above the world, on an island removed from everything. She knew that. But she had such a hard time with all the cures. They seemed rough and brusque and brutal, as if they abused her skin with a pot scrubber . . . forcing herself into a mass of people, a stranger among strangers. . . . But it was much more tempting to curl up with a book under her thick white comforter. Still, sometimes after she curled up, she regretted her lack of courage and felt bleakly lonely. It was important to have a really good book.

It’s true that if friends can never count on you being there the next time they need you, the place they leave for you might be very small. That’s self-defense. If you abandon people—even if it’s not your fault—they will eventually get over you and find someone else. Good for them. But you’re an adult now, and you can build things as deep and as long-lasting as you want to. I wish you wouldn’t underestimate your ability to make people love you. - Aunt Aja

My feelings are my own responsibility. I don’t see what trust has to do with it. I can’t go around handing them off to other people.

It was hard to trust in happiness, coming from another person, but . . . there was so much of it, around him.

You can't ever really have enough worth that when you're gone, the spot you left won't close over.

Humble people were unsettling at best. All that lack of backbone. It was just creepy. Like talking to linguine.

You don’t meet many people who let you practice your self-confidence on them that way. The ones who do are either very weak or very strong.

You only open a present for the person it’s for.

Getting respect from one’s own family was like trying to draw blood from a stone.

Remember karma: the fruit you harvest grows from the seeds you plant.

it’s perhaps better for a prince to learn young that looking before one steps is basic self-preservation.

one must always know when to yield magic into the hands of the children who wanted to eat it up.

May you love your life and seize it with both hands.

May you realize your own freedom.