Liddia

“Things change,” Daja said softly. “We change with them. We sail before the wind. We become adults. As adults, we keep our minds and our secrets hidden, and our wounds. It’s safer.”
― Tamora Pierce, The Will of the Empress

“Why is it safe for you and not for me?" whispered Marya Morevna.
"Because you're still a girl." The vintovnik grinned. "Girls have to obey rules. Chyerti break them.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“So it is written—but so, too, it is crossed out. You can write over it again. You can make notes in the margins. You can cut out the whole page. You can, and you must, edit and rewrite and reshape and pull out the wrong parts like bones and find just the thing and you can forever, forever, write more and more and more, thicker and longer and clearer. Living is a paragraph, constantly rewritten.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“Rudolph, far from being the adorable, earnest fellow of the tale, is in fact Ruyd-al-Olafforid, the All-Destroying Flame of the Yukon. His mother was Kali and his father was an ice floe. His nose appears red because his body is full of coals, and his eyes flare with a terrible conflagration of his soul. The tips of his antlers are like candles in the snowy wind. He is not vengeful, but he is the light in the dark of winter, consuming and giving life at the same time. Your carrots only make the lord of flame stronger.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams