Beata

“Why does it matter?” asked Nikolai.
“Because unlike Kaz, I have a conscience.”
“I have a conscience,” said Kaz. “It just knows when to keep its mouth shut.”
Jesper snorted. “If you have a conscience, it’s gagged and tied to a chair somewhere.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves

“Nobody tells you how those nights that stand out in your memory—levee sunset nights, hurricane nights, first kiss nights, homesick sleepover nights, nights when you stood at your bedroom window and looked at the lilies one porch over and thought they would stand out, singular and crystallized, in your memory forever—they aren't really anything. They're everything, and they're nothing. They make you who you are, and they happen at the same time a twenty-three-year-old a million miles away is warming up some leftovers, turning in early, switching off the lamp. They're so easy to lose.”
― Casey McQuiston, One Last Stop

“How does she explain that she used to be afraid to love anyone because there’s a well at the center of her chest and she doesn’t know where the bottom is?”
― Casey McQuiston, One Last Stop

“Love was the destroyer. It made mourners, widows, left misery in its wake. Grief and love were one and the same. Grief was the shadow love left when it was gone.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves