Jackie Keller

“I decided then to tell Artichoke to be ugly. To make herself as ugly as possible and not worry too much about beauty or what anyone thought of her. To be unpainted, to live in the breeze and stand under waterfalls and not be worried over the height of mountains, of quiet trails deep in the woods. To not be scared of roads slick with rain, of valleys dry in drought. I'd tell her 'no fear' and she'd know it was the deepest truth and she would be everything I was not. She would be wild and free. And I wouldn't worry because I knew the secret. That through all of her ugliness, all her hiking and running and jumping and falling and getting back up and saying no and saying what she wanted, her scraped hands, her freckled skin, her smart brain, she would of course be beautiful.”
― Chelsea Bieker, Godshot

“I have to live in a world where the whole human being that I am will make other people uncomfortable and find a way to not be bothered.”
― Dana Czapnik, The Falconer

“Anyone who says that if you do things a certain way you'll be guaranteed happiness is selling you something. No one knows their own destiny in advance.”
― Dana Czapnik, The Falconer

“We can't make new happiness past a certain point, but we can linger in past joy forever, perfectly captured with the rememberer's eye.”
― Shaun Hamill, A Cosmology of Monsters