Ange

“You needed to forget. But I needed to remember. As I was tortured, it was your voice that kept me sane. Your face that filled my days and nights. I was in a dark room – but I had another, in my memories. The dark room that we shared in Paris. I could go there whenever I wanted. My torturers did what they pleased with my body, but I paid them no heed, with my gift to console me. In my dreams, I was still in your arms.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Dark Mirror

“It may seem strange that people who have already obtained a position of power through violence, invest so much time into justifying their plunder with words. But even plunderers are human beings, whose violent ambitions must contend with the guilt that gnaws at them when they meet the eyes of their victims. And so a story must be told, one that raises a wall between themselves, and those they seek to throttle and rob.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

“those who claimed Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East were just as likely to claim that America was the oldest democracy in the world. And both claims relied on excluding whole swaths of the population living under the rule of the state.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

“As he guided me from the cellar, I glanced back at Arcturus. He watched me like I was a sunrise.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Dark Mirror