Pinecone Jam

“In California everyone just gets…caught up. We don’t think much beyond how we want people to see us, like us.”
― Rin Chupeco, The Sacrifice

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“Brides, nymphs were called, but that is not really how the world saw us. We were an endless feast laid out upon a table, beautiful and renewing. And so very bad at getting away.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“No, what disgusted them was that they had no power over me. I no longer fit their ideal of a virgin waiting for them to claim me. That was what repulsed them. That was what they found monstrous. I wasn’t theirs anymore, and I never could be again. Naturally, violence came next.”
― Kiersten White, Lucy Undying