Eleanor

“Don't you know that boys don't cry?' Adam grinned.
'Shall I tell you something I've only recently discovered,' I replied, not attempting to hide the tears rolling down my face and not the least bit ashamed of them. 'Boys don't cry, but real men do.”
― Malorie Blackman, Boys Don't Cry

“Stories are a different kind of true.”
― Emma Donoghue, Room

“A queen
offers her hand to be kissed,
& can form it into a fist
while smiling the whole damn time.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“...all the things we do, every maladaptive behavior or pattern we have, is the result of a coping mechanism we learned in order to keep us alive or help us survive...I wasn't deceiving people because I was a piece of shit; I was doing what I had learned to do as a child to survive. And I was doing what worked. It just wasn't - let's say - a superhealthy or productive way to operate as an adult.”
― Laura McKowen, We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life