Alia

“I don’t see how nightmares is your reward for something good. Where is your mercy? Where is your sense of doing what’s right—what one human would do? I am not human, and even I know.”
― Isabel Yap, Never Have I Ever

“It wasn’t just the broken world that the Vanishers had left behind. They’d left, too, their true victory: the standards by which people treated each other. Seeing limited resources as things to fight for, people as bodies to safeguard the villages, the old and sick as needless burdens. Weighing everyone against necessity and survival.”
― De Bodard, Aliette

“She’d grown up, but even now she still believed strongly in society. She had always been exemplary in learning to be a woman, truly a straight-A student. It looked excruciatingly tiring.”
― Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

“Do you remember that movie we saw when we were little?” I begin. “The Great Escape—we watched it with Dad at least seven or eight times. It was about these American pilots in a German POW camp who dig this long, long tunnel that runs the length of the compound. But, on the night of the escape, when they reach the end of the tunnel, they realize they’re six meters short of the forest. Their calculations had been off by six meters! They’ve got no choice but to risk their necks and make a run for it, in plain view of the guards. Do you remember?” “No,” she says indifferently.
“Whatever. What I’m trying to say is: Being with a woman is like sticking your head out of the tunnel and discovering that you’ve actually dug through those last few meters.”
― Eva Baltasar, Permagel