sio

“Victory is not assured. Victory may be in the portents, but it must be urged there by violence, by suffering, by martyrs, by blood. Victory is wrought by ingenuity, persistence, and sacrifice. Victory is a game of inches, of historical contingencies where everything goes right because they have made it go right.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“To be godless is probably the first step to innocence," he said, "to lose the sense of sin and subordination, the false grief for things supposed to be lost."
So by innocence you mean not an absence of experience, but an absence of illusions."
An absence of need for illusions," he said. "A love of and respect for what is right before your eyes.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

“Words. Borne on the ever swelling current of hatred, like flowers opening in the current, petals peeling back, then falling apart.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat