Kristine

“It helped that Celia Ray could walk into a joint like nobody I’ve ever seen. She would throw her resplendence into a room ahead of her, the way a soldier might throw a grenade into a machine gunner’s nest, and then she would follow her beauty right on in and assess the carnage.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls

“But of all the things Victor learned during the war -- that living to see another day is almost always a matter of stupid luck, that men who know they might die any minute can learn not to give a shit about who's the All-Star and who's the Mexican, or that heroism is most often small and accidental but it still means the world -- the greatest lesson was this: nothing causes more suffering than vengeance. And Victor has no taste for it, not even as the sole witness to his niece's suffering.”
― Elizabeth Wetmore, Valentine

“Glory opens her mouths, closes it. She shakes her head and looks at her cigarette. I was attacked by a man out in the oil patch.
God damn it all, Tina says, and after a long pause, I'm sorry.
I got in his truck and went with him.
Well hell, sugar, Tina says. That don't mean jack. That evil belongs to him, it's got nothing to do with you.”
― Elizabeth Wetmore, Valentine

“You had to finish a story to know all the answers, and life was no different. Nothing was ever handed to you from the start.”
― Etaf Rum, A Woman Is No Man