Aya

“The future kept arriving. Our bright new toys began to rust before we could get them home, and life went on much as before.”
― Ian McEwan, Machines like Me

“You’ve always felt everything so intensely,” she said after a moment’s pause. “And that was something I did love about you. How much you loved your family, how you would do anything for them. But you kept your heart closed off. You didn’t trust anyone, and I don’t blame you—you took everything on yourself, and you kept so many secrets, because you thought you had to. But when you opened up the Institute for the war council, you made yourself trust other people to help you execute a plan. You didn’t hide;
you let yourself be open to being hurt or betrayed so you could lead them.
And when you came to me in the Silent City and you stopped me breaking the rune—” Her voice shook. “You told me to trust not just you but in the intrinsic goodness of the world. That was my worst point, my darkest point, and you were there, despite everything, with your heart open. You were there to bring me home.”
He laid his fingers against the bare skin of her arm, where her parabatai rune had once been. “You brought me back too,” he said with a sort of awe.
“I’ve loved you all my life, Emma. And when I felt nothing, I realized—
without that love, I was nothing. You’re the reason I wanted to break out of the cage. You made me understand that love creates far more joy than any pain it causes.”
― Cassandra Clare, Queen of Air and Darkness

“A man newly in love knows what life is.”
― Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me

“That was what was gone from Julian, she thought, shivering again. The thousands of emotions that had always lived behind his expressions, the love-for her, for his siblings-behind his eyes. Even his worry seemed to have gone, and that was stranger than anything else.”
― Cassandra Clare, Queen of Air and Darkness