V

“And in all the stories my daughter shall hear,
it will not be princes that slay the dragons,
but little girls that believe in magic
with big, brave hearts and even bigger dreams.

She will learn to rely on her own sword
in every battle, in every struggle, in every war
because she will learn how to devour
every single monster from their very core.”
― Nikita Gill

“To see' means not only to have before one's eyes. It may also mean to preserve in memory. 'To see and to describe' may also mean to reconstruct in imagination. A distance achieved thanks to the mystery of time must not change events, landscapes, human figures into a tangle of shadows growing paler and paler. On the contrary, it can show them in full light, so that every event, every date becomes expressive and persists as an eternal reminder of human depravity and human greatness. Those who are alive receive a mandate from those who are silent forever. They can fulfill their duties only by trying to reconstruct precisely things as they were, and by wresting the past from fictions and legends.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Stop punishing yourself for being someone with a heart. You cannot protect yourself from suffering. To live is to grieve. You are not protecting yourself by shutting yourself off from the world. You are limiting yourself.”
― Leigh Bardugo, King of Scars

“Tattoos, for example, are very hard to forget. I think there's something about the impermanence of life these days that makes it necessary to etch ink into our skins. It reminds us that we've been marked by the world, that we're still alive. That we'll never forget.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me