Rai

“Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street], and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.
The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming the door.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Curiosity is a luxury for the financially secure.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people.”
― Leslye Walton, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender