bella

“Order is present in the earthly kingdom when all beings understand their place. All beings understand their place when they fulfill the roles set out for them. The fish does not attempt to fly. The polecat does not attempt to swim. Only when each being respects the heavenly order may there be peace.”
― R. F. Kuang

“I realized that the world was so obsessed with romantic love that I couldn't go an hour without hating myself because I didn't feel it.”
― Alice Oseman, Loveless

“She never wanted to think about Tikany. She wanted to pretend that she'd never lived there- no, that it had never existed. Because if she could just erase her past, then she could write herself into whoever she wanted to be in the present. Student. Scholar. Soldier. Anything except who she used to be.”
― R. F. Kuang

“I believe in gods as much as the next Nikara does," she replied. "I believe in gods as a cultural reference. As metaphors. As things we refer to keep us safe because we can't do anything else, as manifestations of our neuroses. But not as things that I truly trust are real. Not as things that hold actual consequence for the universe."
She said this with a straight face, but she was exaggerating.
Because she knew that something was real. She knew that on some level, there was more to the cosmos than what she encountered in the material world. She was not truly as skeptic as she pretended to be.”
― R. F. Kuang