Maximilian Birkl

“They're monsters! I know! I was at Golyn Nis! I lay amid the corpses for days! But you-" Kitay swallowed, choking on his words. "You turned around and did the exact same thing. Civilians. Innocents. Children, Rin. You just buried an entire country and you don't feel a thing.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“The motion of a swift is an impenetrable language; as incomprehensible to me as the thoughts of a flower when it opens its petals at dawn, without memory or mind. A coherent logic and a dance, but not one I can shape within myself. All my attempts are approximation. One cannot render meaning in language one finds meaningless; nevertheless I know there is a design, a speaking, a world just on the other side of shadow, untouchable but nonetheless real. Three years since I came home from Ebrekt, and I still dream of the swifts, running: in dreams, sometimes I understand them.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“She was like, Oh, my God, you’re drinking, aren’t you. You’re on amphetamines. You are on coke. You are on amphetamines and coke. I was all, Yeah…Coke Zero. She didn’t laugh. I laughed.
He said, I guess I’ve always thought any pun was automatically funny.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Then I will die on my feet," she said. "I will die with flames in my hand and fury in my heart. I will die fighting for the legacy of my people, rather than on Shiro's operating table, drugged and wasted. I will not die a coward.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War