Virgo.Daddy

“Maybe the others don’t let you see the shards. Maybe they don’t show you the things they mourn. Doesn’t mean it’s not there. Doesn’t mean they don’t feel it. And your father—” Her face went serious now, fiery-fierce. Her hand fell to mine, clutching tight. “Your father, Oraya, felt all those things, too. He was just as broken as the rest of us, and he was so determined not to acknowledge it that he flayed you with those sharp edges and then berated you for having skin instead of steel.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King

“A dead parent is a tricky kind of ghost. If you can make it into more like a doll, putting it in the real house and clothes and such that they had, it helps you to picture them as a person instead of just a person-shaped hole in the air. Which helps you feel less like a person-shaped invisible kid.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“Why does anyone want anyone else? [...] We do not love because people deserve it - nor would I want to be loved because I was the most deserving of some list of candidates. I want to be loved for my worst self as well as my best. I want to be forgiven my flaws.”
― Holly Black, The Prisoner’s Throne

“Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library