Natalie

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series

“I am a guy of limited talents. If I can't kill it with water, a sword, or sarcasm, I am basically defenseless.”
― Rick Riordan, The Chalice of the Gods

“Farewell, my friends,' I told them. 'Be good to one another'... I wondered if I was leaving the snakes with a new religion; if they would tell stories to future generations about the strange rainbow god boy who tripped a lot before returning to the heavens. Or maybe they were just thinking, That kid is really weird.”
― Rick Riordan, The Chalice of the Gods

“How could she ever teach new arrivals to fly? How could she dare to unfurl their wings with the tenderness they deserved when she would always remember the ones she had broken?”
― Allison Saft, Wings of Starlight