Z

“If you are surprised that, so soon after a secret agent tried to kill me, I was wondering whether the man with whom I’d had sex liked liked me, remember that being in love is a form of blunt-force trauma. I was concussed with love for him. I bent my head to the cudgel.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“Bel,” she said helplessly, around the fire in her throat. “Queen of ducks and angels. You shall have poems written to you with a quill on fire. You shall have songs sung to you by enchanted harps. Whole branches of grammar will be invented only to praise you.” “Ysabel Hawthorn,” she said, and she could not keep the heat from her voice, “demand better than to be worshipped by a crumb.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots

“You bet on whether or not I kissed your wife?" Ali was aghast. "What is wrong with the two of you?" When his brother and sister only cackled harder, he drew up. "I hate you. "I hate you both.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Empire of Gold

“Sometimes I am very clever but most of the time I am not. I have been a good person sometimes, and a bad person at others. Sooner or later I will die. But before I do, I will try—I will try very hard—to make it count.”
― R.F. Kuang, Katabasis