Bex Brownsword

“...but because he had enough of being someones legacy; he knew the fear of feeling inadequate, the burden of disappointing. He would never do it again; he would be free. What he wouldn't know until he was much older was that no one was ever free, that to know someone and to love them was to assume the task of remembering them, even if that person was still living. No one could escape that duty, and as you aged, you grew to crave that responsibility even as you sometimes resented it, that knowledge that your life was inextricable from another's, that a person marked their existence in part by their association with you.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise

“Like water they could return to any shape asked of them”
― Fatima Farheen Mirza, A Place for Us

“What I wanted more than any. thing was to grow up. Hard to explain, given how I got short-sheeted on the childhood. Carefree, what is that? If I'd ever known at all, I couldn't remember. But I was still stuck outside of full adulthood, blowing smoke under its door, eyeing the windows with a cement block. It's all we want, we ragged boys of the world. To live as men.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“Because she is thirteen, and I remember how it felt from the inside. I remember what I thought I knew about people, and the pride I took in being alone. But from the outside, the loneliness is palpable, and I think, she is too young.”
― Raven Leilani, Luster