Matilda

“We’re all in this together,’ she said, which was a typically Fifth assumption. The Ninth didn’t think anyone was in anything together, or, if they were, they all had to disperse as soon as humanly possible to avoid splash damage.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“It had bewildered her, back at Canaan House, how the whole of her always seemed to come back to Gideon. For one brief and beautiful space of time, she had welcomed it: that microcosm of eternity between forgiveness and the slow, uncomprehending agony of the fall. Gideon rolling up her shirt sleeves. Gideon dappled in shadow, breaking promises. One idiot with a sword and an asymmetrical smile had proved to be Harrow’s end: her apocalypse swifter than the death of the Emperor and the sun with him.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“If only wars could be won on the strength of the cheering when they begin, instead of the blood and the pain and the horror that feed the gods of discord.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, Return of the Thief

“It is one of the universe's deepest and cruelest jokes that it takes a lifetime to learn the lessons you need in order to live.”
― Jeffrey Cranor, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs