Jill

“Almost no one was paying for magical boarding school because of the magic. The magic was an interesting quirk, a historical curiosity, in a few cases a genuine passion being indulged by a loving parent—but you didn’t pay fifty thousand pounds a year for magic tricks, any more than you paid it for Shakespeare or the respiratory system or the ability to solve quadratic equations. No: Chetwood’s school fees were insurance money, a policy taken out against the future. Let my child be safe. Let my child be happy. Let my child have every single possible chance at freedom, joy, hope, power. Because an elite education was an investment in power. Magic was the least of what you gained at Chetwood. What mattered was the power to walk the walk and talk the talk, to have your résumé picked out of the pile”
― Emily Tesh, The Incandescent

“Fire speaks to something chaotic inside us. It has the power to destroy, but if we respect and recognize the ways it keeps us warm and safe, we can coexist with the fire.”
― Angeline Boulley, Sisters in the Wind

“I began to see that diversity is not only abundant in nature but is its very premise. The beings of our world are bound together by webby agreements predicated on difference.”
― Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature

“Most music is the result of some intimacy with an instrument. One wraps one’s mouth around a whistle and pours one’s breath into it; one all but lays one’s cheek against a violin; and skin to skin is holy drummer’s kiss. But a harp is played most like a lover: you learn to lean its body against your breast, find those places of deepest, stiffest tension with your hands and finger them into quivering release.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots