Anna

“This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you’ll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick your price. I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“I am a bundle of other people's histories, a creature of circumstance.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Because let's talk about power. In the domestic polity, myth dictates that parents are endowed with a disproportionate amount of it. I'm not so sure. Children? They can break our hearts, for a start. They can shame us, they can bankrupt us, and I can personally attest that they can make us wish we were never born. What can we do? Keep them from going to the movies. But how? With what do we back up our prohibitions if the kid heads belligerently for the door? The crude truth is that parents are like governments: We maintain our authority through the threat, overt or implicit, of physical force.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin