Lexie

“Silently she stared at the splintered pieces and felt the flame in her soul gutter.  The flame she had nurtured since she was a child. The flame that had in it what little sparks of happiness she had ever known as well as all her hopes and dreams for the future.  She had tended it so carefully and for so long, and in one, horrendous, agonizing second, felt it simply... go out.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing

“What did it take for that tree to live through those years, make thousands of leaves each spring, store sugars through the winter, turn light and water into layers and layers of wood? It is hard to underestimate the drama of being a tree, or any plant. Every one is an unimaginable feat of luck and ingenuity. Once you know that, you can't unknow it. A new moral pocket has opened in your mind.”
― Zoë Schlanger, The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

“The story is what comes after.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“Do you have this organ here?” Cyrus asked her, pointing at the base of his throat. “A doom organ that just pulses all the time? Pulses dread, every day, obstinately? Like it thinks there’s a panther behind the curtain ready to maul you, but there’s no panther and it turns out there’s no curtain either? That’s what I wanted to stop.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!