Abby

“Salander leaned back against the pillow and followed the conversation with a smile. She wondered why she, who had such difficulty talking about herself with people of flesh and blood, could blithely reveal her most intimate secrets to a bunch of completely unknown freaks on the Internet.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

“What do you need me for? Salander's greatest fear, which was so huge and so black that it was of phobic proportions, was that people would laugh at her feelings. And all of a sudden all her carefully constructed self-confidence seemed to crumble.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

“Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant; once they've cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar tissue, they wear thin. The ones that slice like razors forever are the ghosts of things that never got the chance to happen.”
― Tana French, Broken Harbour

“She took a sort of abject pride in her mecilessness toward herself.”
― David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men