jess b ⋆

“War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who remains.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“One after the other, they were buried under that sky and neither they nor I knew if it was the one under which we'd been born.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“There's no continuity and the world I have come from is utterly foreign to me. I haven't heard its music, I haven't seen its painting, I haven't read its books... I know only the stony plain, wandering, and the gradual loss of hope. I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct. Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence. There is nothing we can do about it.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men