Desirae Murray

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“They all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers. They weren't alone in the world, mattering to no one but themselves. It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse. I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them-- this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn't a whole man.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn't care: I didn't feel I owed him beauty.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted