Camille

“And as your body begins to feel like a home, your courage grows. It grows bigger than you mother's chastisement in the parking lot after the service the first time you go to church unbound. She asks why you aren't wearing a girdle, why you aren't sucking in the way she taught you thirty years ago, and how dare you come into the house of the Lord that way. Your mother, who complains of women in the church nowadays committing the sin of visible panty lines, reminds you that she raised you better than this.

And you say, 'I'm tired of holding my breath.' Then you promise you won't come to church that way again. And you'll keep your word because you won't go to church again at all.”
― Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

“Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls