Sandra

“That's the irony of it." He laughed bitterly. "I can't . I've lost everything, and now, all I can do is make sure I don't lose you. The one thing I could never have had in the first place. You can curse me, spit on me, ignore my warnings, and pretend I don't even exist, but I will not leave you. I will do whatever I have to, to keep you safe. Because your safety, your life...your...you-the sum of all my nothings-is the only thing I have left. I stared at him, speechless and stunned.”
― Lesley Livingston, The Defiant

“Just like whiskey, the marsh dwellers bootlegged their own laws-not like those burned onto stone tablets or inscribed on documents, but deeper ones, stamped in their genes. Ancient and natural, like those hatched from hawks and doves. When cornered, desperate or isolated, man reverts to those instinct that aim straight at survival. Quick and just. They will always be the trump card because they are passed on more frequently from one generation to the next than the gentler genes It is not a morality, but simple math. Among themselves doves fight as often as hawks.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Krieg ist Krieg: Er wird von wenigen angezettelt und von vielen gefuehrt, und am Ende verlieren alle.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“Aeddan was nothing like this brother.
And, for some reason, that suddenly made it harder to keep on hating him for Mael's death. An accident? No, it hadn't exactly been that. The two of them had fought with every heated intention of ending the other. I knew the feeling-the red rage that descends in the middle of a fight, the blind driving need to kill, to win, at whatever cost. For Aeddan, the cost had been his own blood.”
― Lesley Livingston, The Defiant