ellie

“Things have changed for you now, Arc. You’ve got to be like the Grand Canyon. Make your hurt disappear. But not your heart. You’ve got to protect that from your own bitterness that will come for you now.”
― Tiffany McDaniel, On the Savage Side

“Let’s get her to say that in a whisper,” Daffy herself whispered. “And then we’ll keep it like a secret.”
― Tiffany McDaniel, On the Savage Side

“I wish they knew how hard it is to love a child you can’t find. You love her for everything she was. Everything she wasn’t. Everything she might never get to be.”
― Tiffany McDaniel, On the Savage Side

“Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren’t anything like machines. They weren’t dependable. They weren’t efficient. They weren’t predictable. They weren’t durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others. These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn’t high enough. So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too. And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn’t really be said to have any purpose at all. The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren’t even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, “Tralfamadore.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan