Helen

“Today,’ said Lymond, ‘if you must know, I don’t like living at all. But that’s just immaturity boggling at the sad face of failure. Tomorrow I’ll be bright as a bedbug again.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Disorderly Knights

“A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Last Light of the Sun

“He leaned forward suddenly, so that for an instant the strong, bearded face was clear; the voice softened, and there was an aching sadness in it. "Only the creatures of the earth take from one another, boy. All creatures, but men more than any. Life they take, and liberty, and all that another man may have--sometimes through greed, sometimes through stupidity, but never by any volition but their own. Beware your own race, Bran Davies--they are the only ones who will ever harm you, in the end.”
― Susan Cooper, The Grey King

“Some of us rush through life and some of us saunter through life. Mrs. Vesey sat through life.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White