Ariel

“She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“And you love her, yes. But not too much.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you are not mad, or wild, or grieving! You are not roaring out to choke her with your own bare hands! Which means your soul is not too mixed up with hers. And that is good. Here is my experience. Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you. What you want to live and be happy in the world is a woman who has her own life and lets you have yours.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“If you do not respect your own wishes, no one else will. You will simply attract people who disrespect you as much as you do.”
― Vironika Tugaleva