Alice

“You saw what those thousands of people did in front of my father. All the fanfare, all the ceremony—the charade, the theater—I can’t stand it. I loathe to think of people pretending they mourn me when they do not, or praising me when they detest me, or remembering me as kind when I was wicked. I cannot bear the thought of anyone offering to go echo-step with me when they do not mean it.' His voice wavered with real emotion, real fear. 'Wei—if I die tomorrow, I beg of you, don’t let them make a spectacle of me in my death. I wish to die quietly, just as I am.”
― Shen Tao, The Poet Empress

“All I knew was that life without her was a dark void. She was my best friend. My teammate. My family, even more than my parents, who I’d left behind the day I turned eighteen and saw only once in a blue moon. I wasn’t parentless. Not like Miley. But spending time with her was the thing that brought me to life, made me realize that the kind of love I got at home was halfhearted and finite. Drops of water in a bucket. Miley—and her mom, Jane—loved like the turquoise ocean I’d only seen in postcards. Warm and limitless.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, Gray After Dark

“why are women always expected to love those who would hurt us? To take care of those who would use us”
― Shen Tao, The Poet Empress

“From one branch, two azaleas blooming,
Fighting for a piece of the dawn.
The roots lie rotten, the leaves die weeping;
Come night, all the flowers are gone.”
― Shen Tao, The Poet Empress