Mackenzie Kirk

“I’ve been taught any number of ways to manage anger, and they really work. What she’s never been able to teach me is how to want to manage it. So I go on seething and raging and knowing the whole time that it’s my own fault, because I do know how to stop.”
― Naomi Novik, A Deadly Education

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
― William Butler Yeats

“Oh, how I’d enjoyed all that sweet crisp righteous anger, my favorite drug: I’d nearly ridden the high straight into murder.”
― Naomi Novik, A Deadly Education

“I’m not some sort of pallid romantic who insists on being loved for my shining inner being. My inner being is exceptionally cranky and I often don’t want her company myself.”
― Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate