❁ maggie ❁

“By the time you’re done with him, he’ll be begging for mercy. Who is he if he can’t control you? Is he even a man anymore? It will seem like a relief when you give him a hand, even if that hand is holding a blade. And when you take everything from him, you can say what these men say about us: He was asking for it. He was begging for it. He must have wanted it, since he didn’t fight back.”
― Monika Kim, The Eyes Are the Best Part

“I would bear anything and everything for love of you. Now, does my love mean so little to you that you would not suffer for it as I have for yours?” “Must love be about suffering?” She looked at me with eyes so black, I wondered how she could even see. “How else does one show the strength and sincerity of one’s love if not through suffering and sacrifice?”
― Johanna van Veen, My Darling Dreadful Thing

“[W]hen questioned by an anthropologist on what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, “Ours.” —Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto”
― Angeline Boulley, Warrior Girl Unearthed

“What I felt for Agnes was right and true, yes, but it was not selfless. Perhaps love never is.”
― Johanna van Veen, My Darling Dreadful Thing