Carolyn

“It's like pressing a bleeding sore repeatedly, trying to see how far you can go with your tolerance for pain, because if you know the limits of it, you gain some sense of control over it.”
― R.F. Kuang , Yellowface

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“He was no poet. He despised high-flown sentiment, always had. One of the main aims of poetry, as far as he could see, and his classical education had confirmed as much, was to persuade women into your bed who otherwise might not agree to go there, and make everyone think you were a devil of a fine fellow, rather than a hopeless libertine, while you were doing it. A clever trick, or a cheap one, he was not quite sure. Both, perhaps.”
― Emma Orchard, A Duke of One's Own