Jennifer

“What's as perfect as a girl stopped dead, midformation? Girl as blank slate. Girl as reflection of your desires, unmarried by her own. Girl as sacrifice to the idea of girl. Girl as a series of childhood photographs, all marked with the aura of girl who will die young, as if even the third grade portrait photographer should have seen it written on her face, that this was a girl who would only ever be a girl.
The bystander, the voyeur, even the perpetrator—they're all off the hook when the girl was born dead.
On the internet and on TV, they love that.”
― Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions for You

“It wasn't that Rove was a genius-level intellect, but he had a very specific set of skills. Lucas wasn't qualified to diagnose sociopathy, but Rove was capable of telling anyone anything, making utterly convincing promises and being bound by none of it. Rove loved Rove first, things useful to Rove second. And nothing else.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Doors of Eden

“she thinks of double-shifts and boarding-house fleas and all the nothing-girls whose highest hope is for a husband like Floyd Matthews, soft-palmed and stupid, and how it would feel to want more. She thinks of her daddy's knuckles and Mr. Malton's leers and how it would feel to be the dangerous one, for a change.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Once and Future Witches

“Juniper runs her tongue over he teeth and lays out the next words like a winning hand of cards, a heartless snap. "Dead men usually stay put.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Once and Future Witches