“The more one has, the less one desires.”

“I've been working hard at assuming Court polish, but the more I learn about what really goes on behind the pretty voices and waving fans and graceful bows, the more I comprehend that what is really said matters little, so long as the manner in which it is said pleases. I understand it, but I don't like it. Were I truly influential, then I would halt this foolishness that decrees that in Court one cannot be sick; that to admit you are sick is really to admit to political or social or romantic defeat; that to admit to any emotions usually means one really feels the opposite. It is a terrible kind of falsehood that people can only claim feelings as a kind of social weapon.”

“Because you showed one face to all the rest of the world, and another to me.”

“But I'd also learned that the self might want one thing, but that didn't mean it was right.”

“One doesn't lose a self, like a pair of gloves or a pine. We learn and change, or we harden into stone.”

“If more people recognized the difference between friendship and mere attraction, or how love must partake of both to prosper, I expect there'd be more happy people." "And a lot fewer poems and plays," I said, laughing as I splashed about in the scented water.”

“Why did I laugh at his sorry, bedraggled appearance? Because ridiculousness made a repellant situation more bearable.”