noha

“Of all the things that happened there, in that place full of enemies and dust and spies and sadness; of all the things Margot said to me—the calculations that sounded like friendship, the casual shattering of my life—out of all those things, I am grateful for only one: that I never loved her. If I had loved her I couldn’t bear any of it, and so I am grateful for this lack of love, this one remaining thing I can bear. Because even if it’s a terrible thing to have, if I didn’t have that, I’d have nothing.


If Haruko said that, she was lying.
She did love me. I loved her too.”
― Monica Hesse, The War Outside

“I wonder if the heroes the bards sang of that evening knew before they triumphed what they would become. In those crucial moments when a fateful decision was made, did they feel the air brighten with the zing of destiny? Or did they blunder on, not realising the pivotal moment in which destiny swung and the fates were forged?”
― Jennifer Saint, Ariadne

“And for a single instant my body confused the need to kill him with the need to kiss him.”
― Alexandra Bracken, In the Afterlight

“You can't change endings by going back and changing beginnings.”
― Monica Hesse, The War Outside