Krysta Schiele

“Valerie watched him pull away before turning to go inside. Her feelings
were a painful contradiction. On the one hand, she was deathly afraid
of a man whom she was so attracted to as to barely be able to maintain
control when she was around him, on the other hand, that very attraction
and loss of control signaled what she had longed for her whole life,
someone she could fall irretrievably in love with. She was delicately balanced
on the tightrope of some of her most basic personality traits and
her deepest desires. It was a precarious trap for her, and one she wasn’t
going to be able to easily resolve. Unfortunately, the result for Jeremy
was a seesaw of her reactions to him.
What the hell am I thinking, she asked herself as she slowly closed her
apartment door. For now, her fears were winning the battle against her
heart.”
― Jody Summers, The Mayan Legacy

“You can’t set fires, Anna. Never again. Promise.”
[Anna] aimed her defiance at Mary.
“And you? What’s your reason to hate me?”
Caroline spoke quietly. “We nearly died — in the fire in those mountains and at the house when Ravi had a gun pointed at us.” Her eyes were full of tears. “The fire you set at The Old Hospital could have killed me as well as Janet and Agnes.”
Anna muttered into the syrupy dregs of her tea. “Fire, you’re firing me?”
Mary grimaced. There had been too much fire.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“the words carved above the cathedral of my childhood”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“I understand more that pain is evidence to our awakening to truth and also a measure of closeness to truth.”
― Adam Scott Huerta, Motive Black