“... but that's the beauty of boarding school. I make all my own decisions, small and medium, while the big ones are left up to the Prefect Academy - and as far as boys go, to the only expert I know - Suzanne Santry”

“He loved his family and he loved beauty. For a true Italian, those are the only two things that matter, because in the end that's what sustains you. Your family gathers around you and shores you up while the beauty uplifts you.”

“He promised to love me. And for once in my life, I'm going to do the impractical, unwise, ill-advised thing. I'm going to make a decision based upon the feeling I have in my heart, and not what looks good on paper or makes anyone else happy. I'm going to do something for me, and I'll live with whatever Ciro brings into my life and be happy that I did.”

“Really? We are being herded on a bus to drive across town to an all-boy academy where we disembark and join our lonely counterparts on a dance floor. Sounds like a scorecard situation to me.”

“The dance that I wasn't going to attend in about a jillion years just turned into a make-out session with random boys we have never met.”

“This is something that I have learned at PA that I would have never learn at home because I have my own room and I'm an only. Nobody has it easy, not even the Great and Tall Blond One”

“Whever I came into the room, she'd light up, so happy to see me. No one ever in the course of my entire life was ever as happy to see me as she was. Looking back, now, I realize that you only ever need one person who lights up that way when you enter a room. One person is all it takes to give a kid confidence.”