luiza

“That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Shae gave a nod of silent understanding. Niko had put into words something she'd felt for a long time -- a sense that she struggled not only against the Mountain and all the other enemies of the clan, but against something even larger and more inexorable.

Niko lowered his gaze to his hands. "I thought I could escape and find some other meaning in my life. But if the clan crumbles, either quickly or slowly, if it becomes as obsolete and irrelevant as people like Jim Sunto believe, then everything that made me, including my father's murder and my mother's execution, would be meaningless. Every drop of blood spilled, every sacrifice made, every child ever trained to wear jade as a Green Bone warrior of Kekon over centuries of history.... That's what the Pillar carries. That's our power, and ours alone." He looked back toward the school with a small, sad smile. "Ru tried so hard to tell me that I was a selfish fool to run away from it. He was right.”
― Fonda Lee, Jade Legacy

“But... what if what I am is just... nothing?" I breathed out and blinked as the photographer took the first shot. "What if I'm nothing?"
"You're not nothing," Sunil said. "You have to believe that."
Maybe I could do that.
Maybe I could believe.”
― Alice Oseman, Loveless

“The clan is my blood and the Pillar is its master,” she whispered. “I have a lot of regrets in life, but those oaths aren’t one of them.”
― Fonda Lee, Jade War