Melissa

“Her mind was luminous, and her soul sang to her in the sweet moves of chess.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand.”
― Stephen King, It

“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“Listening to the two of them, she had felt something unpleasant and familiar: the sense that chess was a thing between men, and she was an outsider. She hated the feeling.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit