Amelia

“It was worse when I was a kid. I remember the time you caught me telling her, "I love you,' and I can't even remember what you said, but I remember that I had you on your back - I put you straight on the fucking ground. I was always so much bigger and so much stronger. I got on top of you and choked you till your eyes bugged out. I told you that my mother had probably loved me a lot more than yours loved you. You clawed my face so bad that my blood ran down your hands; my face was under your fucking fingernails. When I let you go you couldn't even stand, you just crawled away and threw up. Were you ten, Harrow? Was I eleven?
Was that the day you decided you wanted to die?
You remember how the fuck-off great-aunts always used to say, 'Suffer and learn'?
If they were right, Nonagesimus, how much more can we take until you and me achieve omniscience?”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“Harrow was too amazed by her body's expanding capacity for despair. It was as though her feeling had doubled even as she looked at it, unfolding, like falling down an endless flight of stairs. She dug her hands into the mattress and she cried for Gideon Nav.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“Hurry up. I have a letter for you,' said Ianthe.
Harrow, it was in your handwriting. She handed me a fat, bulging envelope with your handwriting, and it said 'To be given to Gideon Nav,' and I felt - strange. Time softened as I held it, and I didn't even care about the barely repressed mirthful scorn on the other girl's face. It was your curt, aggravated handwriting, curter and more aggravated than ever, like you'd written it in a hurry. I'd gotten so many letters in that handwriting, calling me names or bossing me around. You'd touched that letter, and I - you know it was killing me twice that you weren't there, right? You must know it was destroying me to be there in your body, trying to keep your thumbs on, and I couldn't even hear your damn voice?”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“You cut up an onion, burn it at the bottom of the pot, put in a few vegetables, and then some meat. It won’t taste like anything, so put in a few teaspoons of salt, and then it’ll taste like a few teaspoons of salt.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth