Quote 10
Oh, little prince! Bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life… For a long time you had found your only entertainment in the quiet pleasure of looking at the sunset. I learned that new detail on the morning of the fourth day […] (6.1)
When the prince was back on his own planet (before he began any of his adventures), he didn’t really have the most awesome times. His “only entertainment” was “the quiet pleasure of looking at the sunset.” In other words, he had no X-Box, candy bars, or Internet. And worst of all, he didn’t even have anyone to talk to.
Quote 11
I had drunk the water. I breathed easily. At sunrise the sand is the colour of honey. And that honey colour was making me happy, too. What brought me, then, this sense of grief? (25.20)
This is a moment that feels pretty weird to the narrator. He’s got several things going on that are “making [him] happy.” He’s got water in the desert. And he’s got a sunrise, making the world full of beautiful color. Woot, right? Yet, with all of that, he is puzzled by the fact that he feels sad, too—perhaps because he senses that the prince will be leaving him soon.
Quote 12
And now six years have already gone by… I have never yet told this story. The companions who met me on my return were well content to see me alive. I was sad, but I told them: “I am tired.”
Now my sorrow is comforted a little. That is to say—not entirely. But I know that he did go back to his planet, because I did not find his body at daybreak. It was not such a heavy body… And at night I love to listen to the stars. It is like five hundred million little bells… (27.1-2)
At the end of the book we’re pretty close to where we started, with the narrator thinking about how long it’s been since he had his encounter with the prince. When he first parted from the prince, he “was sad”; six years later, he’s still full of “sorrow.” Although he says the sorrow’s gotten a little better, it’s still there. Looks like losing someone like the prince isn’t something you can get over very quickly.