Deborah King

“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?"
A great Shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“But the world I wanted wasn't the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“But it was all the same choice, every time. The choice between the one death and all the little ones.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver