Sue

“Santa had once existed. He died when Violette stopped believing in him. Every year, millions of Santas are born and killed at the same time. Every child must kill Santa on the road to adulthood. Little do children know, Santa is just the beginning. There are plenty of others after him, whom children kill without a sound. Without knowing. That is why every child gets lonelier and lonelier as they grow up. The vacancy cannot simply be filled by another human being. People are not as kind or loyal as those creatures of imagination whom the child has killed. An empty heart is the penalty for killing those who’ve stuck with them.”
― Cheon Seon-ran, The Midnight Shift

“I, for one, am not pro-sex. I am not sex-positive or sex-negative. I am pro-pleasure, which does not need to include sex at all, and I am pro-sexual choice—real choice. It is not enough to say that everyone should only do what they want. That’s a bromide that anyone can parrot and it ignores the ways that society pressures us to want certain things. Back it up. Show us examples of powerful, enviable women who are openly indifferent to sex, secure in that decision, and not constantly challenged by others. Don’t reinforce the new charmed circle with comments about how polyamory is more evolved than monogamy, or look down on vanilla sex. Stop assuming that sexual behavior must be linked to political belief or that horniness is an interesting personality trait. That’s closer to what I mean by real choice.”
― Angela Chen, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex

“As the sun brightened above the eastern mists, the tiny wheeling flecks in the air that Arren watched seemed to sparkle, like gold-dust shaken in water, or dust-motes in a sunbeam. And then Arren realized that they were dragons. As Lookfar approached the islands, Arren saw the dragons soaring and circling on the morning wind, and his heart leapt up with them with a joy, a joy of fulfillment, that was like pain. All the glory of mortality was in that flight. Their beauty was made up of terrible strength, utter wildness, and the grace of reason. For these were thinking creatures, with speech and ancient wisdom: in the patterns of their flight there was a fierce, willed concord. Arren did not speak, but he thought: I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“It is funny how the lessons you teach your children to protect them end up becoming a wall that separates you.”
― Tashan Mehta, Mad Sisters of Esi