Maria

“Mud of the gods, woman, what are you doing?’
Abrastal looked up. ‘What does it look as if I’m doing, Spax?’
Her fiery tresses lay heaped on the tent floor. She was wrapped in her blanket and as far as he could tell, naked underneath. He watched as she resumed slashing long lengths away with her knife. ‘I witness,’ he said, ‘the death of my lust.’
‘Good. It’s about time. I was never going to bed you, Barghast.’
‘Not the point. It was the desire I took so much pleasure in.’
‘That’s pathetic.’
Spax shrugged. ‘I am an ugly man. This is how ugly men get through each damned day.’
‘You’ve been bedding my daughter.’
‘She only does it to infuriate you, Highness.’
Abrastal paused with her knife, looked up at him. ‘And has it succeeded?’
Grinning, Spax said, ‘So I tell her every night. All about your rants, your foaming mouth, your outrage and fury.’
‘Ugly and clever, a deadly combination in any man.”
― Steven Erikson, The Crippled God

“I have heard the death-cry. Was she kin? She said as much, when first she touched me. We were upon the ground. Far from each other, and yet of a kind.
I heard her die.
And so I came to mourn her, I came to find her body, her silent tomb.
But she dies still. I do not understand. She dies still—and there are strangers. Cruel strangers. I knew them once. I know them now. I know, too, that they will not yield.
Who am I?
What am I?
But I know the answers to these questions. I believe, at last, that I do.
Strangers, you bring pain. You bring suffering. You bring to so many dreams the dust of death.
But, strangers, I am Icarium.
And I bring far worse.”
― Steven Erikson, Dust of Dreams

“You dream that you are strong, sensible, logical… the kind of person who always has a bit of string. But that’s just your excuse for not being really, properly human. You’re just a brain, no heart at all. You didn’t even cry when Granny Aching died.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“Solovey," Vasya said, drawing the door nearly to. "I love you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch