Michaela

“Embarrassment, as it turns out, is more powerful than information. And shame is the enemy of truth.”
― Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons

“I shall not miss you, Mother. Perhaps I won’t even remember you. Does a flower remember its life as a seed? Does a phoenix recall itself as it burns anew? You will not see me again. I shall be but a shadow streaking across the sky—fleeting, speeding, and utterly gone.”
― Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons

“And now I shall see to him. Tooth and claw. The downtrodden becomes the bearer of a heavenly, righteous flame. It burns me, even now. I find myself unbound by earth, unbound by man, unbound by wifely duty and womanly pain.”
― Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons

“Sometimes, I feel that we are all tricked by love, and its rigid requirement of pain. We find the love of our lives and cleave to our beloved when we are still quite young and do not yet understand that we must, by our nature, die someday. In any successful marriage, one partner must face the reality of being very old, and very alone. What is grief, but love that’s lost its object?”
― Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons