Nyah ^⎚-⎚^

“The silence didn’t feel peaceful. It felt thick. Like the layer of fuzz on your tongue after a hard night of drinking, which you can’t see or touch but you can damn well taste.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Feasts at Night

“It's a place I go to, even if nobody else can see that I've gone. I can smell it and certainly hear it, even if I can't always see it.

That's the problem with all those well-meaning people who try to comfort you by telling you that everything's okay, you're home now, and the war's over, as if you're the idiot who can't read a newspaper and see that an armistice has been declared. It's like telling someone that Greece is over, or England, or Russia. It's nonsensical. Places aren't ever over, except maybe Pompeii.

Still we pretend we believe it, all of us who sometimes fall over into that familiar place. Trying to explain that the war will never be over just makes you sound either mad or self-pitying, and makes your relatives look at you worriedly and pat your hand, and that's far more exhausting. You learn to just smooth over the conversation and get on with things. It doesn't even feel like a lie.

As long as you don't hurt anybody and don't act too obviously strange, most people will let it go. The other ones like you understand. We all realized long ago that we're dual citizens now, that we come from two different places.

Gallacia. And the war.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Feasts at Night

“Listen,” said Delphine. “The best part of being married to George Barlow for a decade was learning that it’s all right not to do everything that’s expected of you all of the time. This is a notion that has been positively liberating for me. The way we were raised—the way our parents raised us, I mean—it trained us to think it’s our job to be absolutely correct in everything that we do. But it isn’t, Bunny. Do you see? We can have our own thoughts, our own inner lives. We can do as we please, if we only learn not to care so much about what people think.”
― Liz Moore, The God of the Woods

“It was wonderful, thought Tracy, having friends like these, who seemed to see the parts of yourself you worked hardest to hide, and bring them into the light and celebrate them with a sort of tender ribbing that uplifted more than it put down.”
― Liz Moore, The God of the Woods