Becky

“A life before you in the moment isn't worth a hundred elsewhere, three months from now.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“If you want me to breathe in this wreckage, I have to lean into it, head-on. Place my whole weight in the wreckage, allow it to hold me up, hold me down. It means reliving every single moment. The hardest, darkest, sharpest ones. The happy ones before he died that bring a specific kind of pain. It means being pregnant all over again. Counting down the days. Filled with that exquisite excitement that is absolutely unique to the moment you meet your child. Sometimes I want to go looking for the pain. I want to marinate in it, allow it to soak into my skin. It’s a tonic of sorts. A flush of the system. A way to demolish the foundation and start from nothing. Which sometimes—dare I say it—can make you feel good on the other end. It rewards you to taste fearlessness. To have nothing to lose. The grief is disarming, but sometimes the afterward is intoxicating. Because what can you do to me now? This cockiness was hard-won. I’m new land craving to be built upon. KATE SUDDES, Writing Your Grief student, on the death of her son, Paul”
― Megan Devine, It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand

“I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“They think that you won't hit back - that you'll just lower your eyes and hide. And sometimes, to protect yourself, to make it go away, you do. But sometimes, you find yourself standing in exactly the right position, wielding exactly the right weapon to hit back. So I hit. I hit fast and hard and furious. I hit with nothing but the language whispered between circuits and wire, the language that can bring people to their knees.”
― Marie Lu, Warcross