Cher

“Books were her salvation. As a child, she’d had a shelf of childhood favorites that she loved enough to read over and over again. But after, during the hospital stay and the long voyage and the cold days in Idlewild’s dreary hallways, books became more than mere stories. They were her lifeline, the pages as essential to her as breathing.”
― Simone St. James, The Broken Girls

“Books, Sonia had decided, were what she would live with when she finally left this place. She would work in a library—any library, anywhere. She’d sweep the floors if she had to. But she’d work in a library, and she’d read the books every day for the rest of her life.”
― Simone St. James, The Broken Girls

“It’s called the Rule of Thirds. When you’re chasing a big goal, you’re supposed to feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time. If the ratio is off and you feel good all the time, then you’re not pushing yourself enough. Likewise, if you feel bad all the time, then you might be fatigued and need to dial things back.”
― Alexi Pappas, Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

“There was no Internet, no way to raise outrage via a Twitter campaign, no digital cameras with which one could take a photo and send it worldwide in seconds.” And that left Ravensbrück abandoned and dismantled, forgotten.”
― Simone St. James, The Broken Girls