montana

“So Alecto, wearied of talking, kneeled upon the rock and offered up the sword to her, and placed the child’s hand upon the blade, so that it received also the red blood of the child. This made the child exceeding faint, but it did not swoon of weariness.

Which strength pleased Alecto, who said: Notwithstanding, I offer you my service.

To which a voice on the opposite side of the shore was raised, exceeding wroth, and Alecto heard it shout in a very great shout: Get in line, thou big slut.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Every woman has the instinct to harm. We spend our whole lives denying it, but it's there. And denying it only damages us. It doesn't actually help anyone - least of all people we think we're protecting from ourselves. Because the instinct to harm? It leaks out in other ways. Darker, stranger ways - more insidious ways - until suddenly we've actually ruined someone's life instead of just punching them in the face. Don't you think they would have preferred a fist in the face, given the choice to choose?”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“And all the parts of me that are ugly and lonely and horrible and sad will be the parts of me that other people hold close to themselves and fine a secret resonance with, and about which they say to themselves: I know that thing too, when I'm all alone that's how I feel too. And even if nobody says those words out loud, right then, we will be feeling the same feelings so strongly that we will forget that we aren't of one body, one mind, one tenuous heart. And if it isn't my play, then I will still be part of that collective witnessing organism, still be a single cell within a warm and gazing animal. It's the sort of feeling that becomes a constant longing. It's the sort of longing upon which you build an entire life.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“Camilla and Palamedes were loved by Nona, said Paul. Pyrrha was loved by Nona. It’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth