Nadja

“She had become more, had become something that did not need air to breathe, something that did not understand hate or love or fear or grief.

It had scared her more than anything else. That utter lack of feeling. How good it had felt to be so removed.
...
She had been aware, yes. Had killed the kelpie because she wished it dead. But all the weight, the echoing thoughts, the hatred and guilt that sliced her like knives- they had vanished.

And it had been so seductive, so freeing and lovely, that she'd known the Mask had to be destroyed. If only to save herself from it.
...
Everyone else would be safe from its temptation and power- except for her. The one who most needed to be barred from it.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“To anyone who’s ever felt lost in a wood. There is a
strange sort of finding in losing.”
― Rachel Gillig, Two Twisted Crowns

“There once was a girl,” he murmured, “clever and good, who tarried in shadow in the depths of the wood. There also was a King—a shepherd by his crook, who reigned over magic and wrote the old book. The two were together, so the two were the same: “The girl, the King… and the monster they became.”
― Rachel Gillig, One Dark Window

“There were not enough pages in all the books Elm had read, in all the libraries he’d wandered, in all the notebooks he’d scrawled, that could measure—denote or describe—just how beautiful she was.”
― Rachel Gillig, Two Twisted Crowns