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Judith Viorst is an American author, journalist, and psychoanalytic researcher best known for her beloved children's book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and for her witty, sharp poetry and essays about adult life. She has written about marriage, aging, loss, and the persistent gap between what we intend and what we do with a warmth and honesty that has made her one of the most widely loved writers on the pleasures and frustrations of ordinary life. Her observation about chocolate is also, unmistakably, an observation about willpower, desire, and the eternal human struggle against our own best intentions.

World Chocolate Day is a celebration of one of humanity's most reliable sources of joy — a food that has been used as currency, medicine, ritual offering, and comfort across centuries and cultures. Viorst's quote is funny because it is true in a way that every person who has ever bought a chocolate bar with the intention of saving half recognizes immediately. The capacity to break it is easy. The capacity to stop is the whole challenge. In that tiny comic battle — one piece versus four — is every struggle of discipline and desire that makes us human. Celebrate by having the whole bar. Viorst would understand.