Arden

“This was how it was done: you bare your belly to a great beast and endure trials and it all works itself out. There is a treasure or a sword. Or a woman. And that thing is yours not because you defeated anything, or because your flesh was hard and unyielding, but because you were worthy of it, worthy all along. The trials and the beast were just a way of telling the world you wanted it, and the world asking in her hard way, hard as bones and hollow mountains, if you really and truly did.”
― Catherynne M. Valente

“It was like burning the house you live in, when there is a storm raging outside in the middle of winter. Don’t say you haven't wanted to, never had the inkling, the almost-knowledge that everything you love and hold dear is holding you back. Back from what? I was going to find out.”
― Victoria Gosling, Before the Ruins

“I do not understand 'damned.' You are. And because you are, you can walk where you will, into peace, oblivion, or pits of fire, but you will always choose.”
― Katherine Arden

“Memory is not an analog photograph that fades. Memory is a house, a castle with many rooms. Some of the rooms are deeper inside, honeycombed away. Each has a thousand keys—an image, a smell, a sound. Behind each door is a thousand other doors.”
― Victoria Gosling, Before the Ruins