Audrey

“People like to say love is unconditional, but it's not, and even if it was unconditional, it's still never free. There's always an expectation attached. They always want something in return. Like they want you to be happy or whatever and that makes you automatically responsible for their happiness because they won't be happy unless you are ... I just don't want that responsibility.”
― Katja Millay, The Sea of Tranquility

“Your place is with me,” Jem said. “It always will be.”
“What do you mean?”
He flushed, the color dark against his pale skin. “I mean,” he said, “Tessa Gray, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
Tessa sat bolt upright. “Jem!”
They stared at each other for a moment. At last he said, trying for lightness, though his voice cracked, “That was not a no, I suppose, though
neither was it a yes.”
“You can’t mean it.”
“I do mean it.”
“You can’t—I’m not a Shadowhunter. They’ll expel you from the Clave—”
He took a step closer to her, his eyes eager. “You may not be precisely a Shadowhunter. But you are not a mundane either, nor provably a
Downworlder. Your situation is unique, so I do not know what the Clave will do. But they cannot forbid something that is not forbidden by the Law.
They will have to take your—our—individual case into consideration, and that could take months. In the meantime they cannot prevent our
engagement.”
“You are serious.” Her mouth was dry. “Jem, such a kindness on your part is indeed incredible. It does you credit. But I cannot let you sacrifice
yourself in that way for me.”
“Sacrifice? Tessa, I love you. I want to marry you.”
― Cassandra Clare

“He says, "I would walk around the township and I could point them out, which girls had been abused. You could see it in them. There's a luminosity to incest. The taboo is so strong and the damage so great. Luminosity--do you understand? It travels across oceans and down generations. They shine with it.”
― Emma Brockes, She Left Me the Gun: My Mother's Life Before Me

“Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.”
― Shannon L. Alder