Arden

“I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily

“Some dry leaf blows into a campfire well-stoked and drawing well. What follows? That leaf catches at once, swiftly is consumed, a shadow withering briefly in the fierce light, and thereafter little remains, not cinder and ash so much as smudges of char.”
― Kai Ashante Wilson, Super Bass

“Small tasks performed for the betterment of my future self. It was a law I had come to live by: Thou Shalt Not Lay Mines for Thy Future Self! Thou Shalt Not Create Great Piles of Shit for Her to Shovel! But then sometimes it left me feeling like a butler to a cold and demanding stranger: the pension contributions, the long hours at work, the time put in at the gym, the eternal vigilance. Because what about me? What about the me now?”
― Victoria Gosling, Before the Ruins

“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