Val

“Later, years later, I would hear a song made of our meeting. [...] I was not surprised by the portrait of myself: the proud witch undone before the hero's sword, kneeling and begging for mercy. Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“The sea was as black as basalt, covered with churning foam, ice-green, clotted cream, shivering high walls full of needles of air going up and up and crashing down on other walls of water on the crumbling coasts of the world.”
― A.S. Byatt, Ragnarok

“Life is hard. What an understatement.
Hard is too mild for the trouble we've seen. Life is hell shot with just enough heaven to make the pains of hope all the sharper.
Life is impossible. Ugly. Agonizing. Inexplicable. Torture.”
― Amy Harmon, From Sand and Ash

“She screamed, long and feral, that savage beast rising up in her chest like it would break her in half -tear her meat apart and emerge, blood-soaked and grief-starved, ready to die, ready to burn, ready to do whatever it took as long as she died with her enemies howling beneath her claws.”
― Hope Cook, House of Ash