Xiao Chen

“He’s come out the other side. That was all. No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just … come out the other side.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“This is their custom regarding marriage: it is binding only so long as the woman wishes to be bound by it. The woman chooses the man, although the man may court a woman he finds desirable, with gifts and deeds of war done in her honor. If an Outislander woman accepts a man’s courtship, it does not mean she has bound herself to him, only that she may welcome him into her bed. Their dalliances may last a week, a year, or a lifetime. It is entirely of the woman’s choosing. All things that are kept under a roof belong to the woman, as does all that comes from the earth which her mothershouse claims. Her children belong to her clan, and are commonly disciplined and taught by her brothers and uncles rather than by their father. While the man lives on her land or in her mothershouse, his labor is hers to command. All in all, it baffles this traveler why a man would willingly submit to such a minor role, but Outislanders seem likewise baffled by our arrangements, asking me sometimes, “Why do your women willingly leave the wealth of their own families to become servants in a man’s home?”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Fate

“Who am I, when I am not surrounded by the walls of my life? When they have all fallen into dust and rubble?”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“What sort of person would cling to the hope that someone else would return to give meaning to her life? What sort of quivering parasite needed someone else to validate her existence?”
― Robin Hobb, Blood of Dragons