Sophie

“Eugene slowly lifted his gaze from his shoes. He would only die if someone tried to play the hero. It had been such a long summer, the sun so bleak and unforgiving, and at the end of such a wearying decade. He prayed there were no heroes left.”
― Arden Powell, The Bayou

“Please listen to me, I willed her. I knew if she ventured onto that battlefield, I would follow because I loved her, not because I was brave.”
― Anna Burke, In the Roses of Pieria: Library Edition

“I learned how to survive in the cutthroat world of girl-hood, where are all strangeness was unrooted as ruthlessly as weeds from a garden. I domesticated my own wildness, starved the odd appetites inside me. I remade myself into Laura the saint, Laura who is reliable and dependable, if a little boring.”
― S.T. Gibson, An Education in Malice

“I can’t lose the thing I’ve held onto for so long, you know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story, you know? I really, really need it to be that.”
“I know,” she says.
“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it”? I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa