A will to be unkind is like a sickness. It can be healed or driven out. But to be unkind because you are thoughtless is the worst kind of blindness: difficult to cure, because you cannot see the fault even as you commit it.

How much easier my life would be if I did not love you! I thought. How much less painful, but how much plainer. How much less color there would be in the world.

For surely a king is first a man. And so it must follow that a king does as all men do: the best he can.

Maybe all young men who love us become knights in shining armor when we love them back.

Five is for five heartbeats, the length of time it takes to breathe in or out. For that is how quickly a life may change, for better or for ill. The time it takes to make up, or change, your mind.

Love cannot thrive simply by being offered. Sooner or later it must be accepted and reciprocated. It must be seen for what it is and nourished according to its needs, or it will die.

Love so joyfully and freely given can never be taken away. It is never truly gone.