Hanna

“We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. Our soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

“He didn’t deserve peace and he didn’t deserve forgiveness, but if he was going to die today, maybe the one thing he’d earned was the memory of her - brighter than anything he would ever have a right to - to take with him to the other side.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“The drüskelle gave their oath to Fjerda, but to their god as well. If they could be made to see miracles where once they’d seen abomination, what else might change? I have been made to protect you. His duty to his god, his duty to Nina. Maybe they were the same thing. What if Djel’s hand had raised the waters the night of the wrathful storm that wrecked the drüskelle ship and bound Matthias and Nina together?
Matthias was running through the streets of a foreign city, into dangers he did not know, but for the first time since he’d looked into Nina’s eyes and seen his own humanity reflected back at him, the war inside him quieted.
We’ll find a way to change their minds, she’d said. All of them. He would locate Nina. They would survive this night. They would free themselves of this damp, misbegotten city, and then … Well, then they’d change the world.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom