Melissa

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

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

“It's an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it; I can dominate it. And it's predictable. So, if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles