Sunaina

“You’re not a monster,” I said. But I lied. What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence - but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity

“There was a time when mapmakers named the places they travelled through with the names of lovers rather than their own.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient