Tove

“Time brushed up against her cheek and asked her to take a breath, but she only held still, reveling in the swirl of emotion shaking through her ribs. Her heart turned itself inside out, read aloud the writing in red on her arteries and valves, told her pointedly that love was never wholly the grand battles and explosive deeds. Love, she thought, was kernel of warmth nestled deeper in her chest, glowing with a sense of comfort whenever Roma's eyes was on her - the same comfort she'd first found when they were fifteen, everlasting.”
― Chloe Gong, Last Violent Call

“Every moment mortals died, by shipwreck and sword, by wild beasts and wild men, by illness, neglect and age. It was their fate, as Prometheus had told me, the story that they all shared. No matter how vivid they were in life, no matter how brilliant, no matter the wonders they made, they came to dust and smoke. Meanwhile every petty and useless god would go on sucking down the bright air until the stars went dark.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“A city reborn is a city traumatized.
It remembers its past, every second that it took to get to this point. It sees the former version of itself and knows that it has changed, its boots no longer fitting, its hats no longer comfortable. The streets trace how they used to sprawl. No matter how it is paved over and reorganized, memories and echoes do not fade away that easily.”
― Chloe Gong, Foul Lady Fortune

“It isn't pretty, he wanted to say, it's lonely, it's desolate, it's a chilling portrait of vastness. How ignorant are you to look at this and diminish it to some kind of trinket, are you dead? It's the human condition! It's the entire universe itself! It's the depths of spacetime you utter fucking philistine and how dare you, how fucking dare you stand there and fail to weep? What kind of sad, unremarkable nothingness have you so callously lived that you can witness the splendor of her existence and not fall to your knees for having missed it, for having misunderstood it all this time? Pretty, that's what you think this is? You think that's all she's capable of? You fool, she's done the impossible. She has explained everything there is to know about the world in less than the time it took for your eyes to filly focus, and do you realize that I will spend a lifetime trying to do the same never come close? This is an opus!, this is a triumph!, this is the meaning of life and you would think the answer would be satire, but it isn't, its Truth. She told the Truth like you could never dream of telling it, and I pity you, that you could see the inside of your own soul and reduce it like this, so pitilessly. So carelessly. With the vacuous deficiency of, Oh, this is pretty.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether