“Life hands us lessons, and my lesson was to face this awful situation and grow from it, Blossom. I thought love had been taken away from me, but it hadn't been. I was still the same person who had loved Mr. Feingold and my old aunts and my cousins and my friends. I still ahd love inside of me, and I still had it to give. ”

“Find the love inside of yourself, and the rest will follow. I promise you this with every inch of my being. I know this much is true, and I've got the scars to prove it.”

“They would fade away-and I would be left alone to face the people at school,and the reporters,and Adriane,and all the places where Max had taken my hand or breathed in my ear or told me he loved me,and the emptiness that used to be Chris.”

“I quickly dropped my hands and changed the subject. "So those two who visited me the other night. Who were they?" I asked.He smiled, knowingly. "Ares and Aphrodite."Of course, I thought. In fact, I think I had already sort of figured that out. Although in my mind they were still Mr. Scowly Face and Miss Perfect Bitch. I found those the names I had given them much more appropriate”

“At my very lowest, just when I believed unhappiness would eat me alive, I surrendered. I didn't suddenly become happy all at once; it took time. But I grew through the pain, grew to a place where I finally found understanding, and through understanding I found peace.”

“I was marching to the beat of my own drummer, and I was clearly out of step with reality.”

“It had been so many years since Charlotte had experienced the sensation of being held in someone's arms. But tonight, between the music and the moon and the unaccountable black magic of the Southern air, she was embraced in the spirit of everything that was good in this world. And she felt free.”