Alyssa

“We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It's worth being cold for that.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Peut-être une des femmes que j'ai vues mortes dans les caves était ma mère, et que mon père gît momifié près d'une grille: entre eux et moi tout a été rompu, il n'y a pas de continuité et le monde dont je suis la descendante m'est totalement étranger. Je n'ai pas entendu sa musique, je n'ai pas vu sa peinture, je n'ai pas lu ses livres, sauf les quatre que j'ai trouvés dans le refuge et auxquels je n'ai pas compris grand-chose: je ne connais que la plaine caillouteuse, l'errance et la lente perte de l'espoir, je suis le rejeton stérile d'une race dont je ne sais rien, pas même si elle a disparu. Peut-être que, quelque part, l'humanité resplendit sous les étoiles, ignorant qu'une fille de son sang achève sa vie dans le silence. Nous n'y pouvons rien.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men