Sarah

“Whatever vague plan I had conceived regarding returning to my pond is wiped from my mind as I zigzag and dive and leap to avoid the fireballs. Each one is only the size of an apple, but packs tremendous power on contact. Every sense I have goes into overdrive as the need to survive takes over. There’s no time to judge if a move is the correct one. When there’s a hiss, I act or die.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“Ican’t sleep. I tried reading. I downloaded three separate books onto my Kindle, but none of them held my attention. I peed twice. I watched a few videos on YouTube, but I heard screen time is bad for sleep so I shut it off. And that’s when I got out of bed and started pacing. Unsurprisingly, this pulls Sam from sleep. He sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes and yawning. He turns on the lamp by the bed and stares at me in disbelief. “Abby, it’s two in the morning.” “I can’t sleep.” “Yeah, I gathered that.”
― Freida McFadden, The Surrogate

“We women were born and bred to expect marriage, and it all happened when we were too young to know better. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen: so young a girl’s first breath was still a part of the earth’s atmosphere. So young you pinched your cheeks to make them pink, you strung flowers in your hair, you denuded daisies whispering of love, you believed in the power of the moon and in the twinkling of the stars as if all of nature and its tidal pulls would take care of you, so blind to the truth of what lay ahead. I later came to realize: Nature was a system, not a nurturer. For every life, there was death; for every bit of laughter, there were tears. For every anguish, there was joy. For the broken bones and crushed eggshells, there were small miracles. For the predators, there was prey. For the herbivores, there were plants, and for the carnivores, there was meat, and every meal for every being caused some other living thing harm. Nature was balance.”
― Rachel Hochhauser, Lady Tremaine

“If only it were that simple. I’d gladly make a deal with God to be a good kid versus changing school and species. I’d even take the geometry test. Well, okay. Maybe not the geometry test—but, still, it’s not like I’d asked to become a freak. This whole thing meant that I was going to have to leave. To start my life over somewhere I’d be the new kid. Somewhere I didn’t have any friends. I blinked hard, forcing myself not to cry. School was the only place I really felt at home anymore; my friends were my only family. I balled up my fists and squidged my face up to keep from crying. One step at a time—I’d just take this one step at a time.”
― P.C. Cast, Marked