Shadon

“You have such a great fear of freedom, brother. It's shackling you. You've identified so hard with the colonizer, you think any threat to them is a threat to you. When are you going to realize you can't be one of them?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“This is what love does. In the stories, love healed your wounds, fixed what was broken, allowed you to go on. But love wasn’t a spell, some kind of benediction to be whispered, a balm or a cure-all. It was a single, fragile thread, which grew stronger through connection, through shared hardship and trust.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves

“Our lives slid together like tectonic plates, ever so infinitesimally, until we couldn't picture them apart.”
― Thao Thai, Banyan Moon

“I really, really didn’t. I just wanted him to stop beating me. I just wanted to live.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys