Trista Stone

“Speaking of livers,' the unicorn said. 'Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back. The true witches know that.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“She had no will of her own now, no consecutive thought, no power of concentration; she was being dashed and hurtled into a chaos that blinded her, some bottomless pit, some sweet, appalling nothingness.
[...]
Papa who played her on a thousand strings, she dancing to his tune like a doll on wires - Papa who harped at her and would not let her be. He was cruel, he was relentless, he was like some oppressive, suffocating power that stifled her and could not be warded off; he gave her all these bewildering sounds and sensations without causing so that she was like a child stuffed with sweets cloying and rich; they were rammed down her throat and into her belly, filling her, exhausting her, making her a drum of excitement and anguish and emotion that was gripping in its savage intensity. It was too much for her, too strong.
She felt as though she were a dry stack in a deep wood, and he had put a match to her and was watching her burn.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Julius

“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“The victory is only a matter of quickness of eye and quickness of foot–snake’s blow against mongoose’s jump–and as no eye can follow the motion of a snake’s head when it strikes, this makes things much more wonderful than any magic herb.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi