Justine

“There is a noise that is different to grief. Sadness wails and cries and lets loose a sound to the heavens like a baby calling for its mother. That kind of noisy grief is hopeful. It believes that things can be put right, or that help can come. There is a different kind of sound to that. Babies left alone too long do not even cry. They become very still and quiet. They know no one is coming.”
― Naomi Alderman, The Power

“As had happened with Julius Caesar, it turned out that the people of Rome were actually quite keen on Gaius and were not fans of presumptuous senators and magistrates making unilateral decisions about the nature of Roman government with swords. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, they believed, not from some farcical bloody murder. Strange men in corridors distributing stab wounds was no basis for a system of government.”
― Emma Southon, A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome

“Camilla, we did it right, didn't we?" Palamedes said, and now Nona knew he wasn't speaking to anyone else in the universe. "We had something very nearly perfect... the perfect friendship, the perfect love. I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I had been allowed to experience being your adept.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War