Jaelri

“The witches, who lowered their eyes for no man . . . Until she could get away, perhaps she might learn a thing or two about what it was like to have fangs and claws. And how to use them.
“Blue,” she whispered. “My blood runs blue.”
“Good choice, witchling,” Manon said, and the word was a challenge and an order. She turned away, but glanced over her shoulder. “Welcome to the Blackbeaks.”
Witchling. Elide stared after her. She had likely just made the biggest mistake of her life, but . . . it was strange.
Strange, that feeling of belonging.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows

“Again, there were maidens who cherished the firm belief that he had come from the sea. Because within his breast could be heard the roaring of the sea. Because in the pupils of his eyes there lingered the mysterious and eternal horizon that the sea leaves as a keepsake deep in the eyes of all who are born at the seaside and forced to depart from it. Because his signs were sultry like the tidal breezes of full summer, fragrant with the smell of seaweed cast upon the shore.”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“All my life, I have had a reputation for being cold, unfeeling. Some have called me heartless, ruthless, even cruel. I am not. I am not beyond emotional response or compassion. But I possess - and my masters count this as perhaps my paramount virtue - a singular force of will. Throughout my career it has served me well to draw on this facility and steel myself, unflinching, at all that this wretched galaxy can throw at me. To feel pain or fear or grief is to allow myself a luxury I cannot afford.”
― Dan Abnett, Xenos

“He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken.

Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway.

It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance