Amanda

“I quit my last real job, as a writer at a magazine, when I was twenty-one. That was the moment when I lost my place of prestige on the fast track, and slowly, millimeter by millimeter, I started to get found, to discover who I had been born to be, instead of the impossibly small package, all tied up tightly in myself, that I had agreed to be.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“But you must remember that, should you choose to live, you do not live only for yourself.” He made a gesture as though to touch his heart. “You live for those you have lost. You carry their legacies inside you. You see, the Elantians destroyed everything that made the roots of our kingdom: our culture, our education, our families and principles. They wish to take us out on our knees, to subdue us so that we will never lift our heads again.
“But what they do not know is that, so long as we live on, we carry inside us all that they have destroyed. And that is our triumph; that is our rebellion.” Rain clung to his lashes as neither of them broke their gaze. “Do not let them win today.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

“War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who remains.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel