Noël Swain

“Sometimes when the wind blows through the leaves, it sounds like your name. It’s like a sigh then. The most beautiful sound I ever heard. A gentle breeze catches in the branches then and I hear it, soft and low, a murmured prayer – Gem-ma, Gem-ma – and then the leaves trail delicate fingers across my cold cheeks.”
― Libba Bray

“I change the world, the world changes me.”
― Libba Bray

“I know it. I know I shall make beastly mistakes, Father-"
"The world does not forgive mistakes so quickly, my girl." He sounds bitter and sad.
"If the world will not forgive me," I say softly, "I shall have to learn to forgive myself."
He nods in understanding.
"And how will you marry? Or do you intend to marry?"
I think of Kartik, and tears threaten. "I shall meet someone one day, as Mother found you.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“You asked me who I thought I was before. I said maybe I was a fish because I love water and you said, you thought a mermaid, maybe.
If you were a mermaid, you said, if you were a mermaid, I was the sea.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Wasteland