The Most Touching Quotes from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“He’d do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter.”

I just finished reading Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet for the second time, and it’s just as delightful the second time through. It’s one of the most wholesome and adorable books that I’ve come across. So, included below are some of my favorite quotations from this emotion-causing historical fiction book. None of these quotes are particularly revealing or spoiling for the book, so if you haven’t yet read it, you can still do so without the annoyance of knowing what’s going to happen.

“I had my chance.’ He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. ‘I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.”

“Henry looked at his son and the young woman he was obviously enchanted with […] How different they were and how little it mattered. Their differences were unnoticeable. So alike, and so happy. Hard to tell where one person ended and the other began.”

“Like so many things Henry had wanted in life — like his father, his marriage, his life — it had arrived a little damaged. Imperfect. But he didn’t care, this was all he’d wanted. Something to hope for, and he’d found it. It didn’t matter what condition it was in.”

“The hardest choices in life aren’t between what’s right and what’s wrong but between what’s right and what’s best.”

“Henry was learning that time apart has a way of creating distance- more than mountains and time zone separating them. Real distance, the kind that makes you ache and stop wondering. Longing so bad that it begins to hurt to care so much.”

“But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it’s how you spend your time on the way down that counts.”

“A young nurse, someone new whom he didn’t recognize, came up to Henry and patted him on the arm. “Are you a friend or a family member?” She whispered the question in his ear, trying not to disturb Sheldon. The question hung there like a beautiful chord, ringing in the air. Henry was Chinese, Sheldon obviously wasn’t. They looked nothing alike. Nothing at all. “I’m distant family,” Henry said.”

Once you’ve read this book, you realize that it’s an exceptional example of living in gratitude regardless of the circumstances placed on you beyond your control. It makes me think of Viktor Frankl and the hardships he bore in the horrendous camps of Nazi Germany. I’ll leave you with two quotations from this great man that I often return to when I feel stressed.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” -Viktor Frankl

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor Frankl