Paula

“I experienced by observing my own body and my own soul that I sorely needed sin, sorely needed concupiscence, needed greed, vanity, and the most shameful despair to learn to stop resisting, to learn to love the world and stop comparing it to some world I only wished for and imagined, some sort of perfection I myself had dreamed up, but instead to let it be as it was and to love it and be happy to belong to it.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them—even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“Who is free, who loves another?”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Everlasting

“And I understood finally that a nation is a house with no windows or doors at all. That no matter what I did-no matter how much blood I spilled in its defense or ink I spent in its praise-it would never, ever be my home.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Everlasting