Sarafina

“Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“And then Serafina understood something for which the witches had no word: it was the idea of pilgrimage. She understood why these beings would wait for thousands of years and travel vast distances in order to be close to something important, and how they would feel differently for the rest of time, having been briefly in its presence. That was how these creatures looked now, these beautiful pilgrims of rarefied light, standing around the girl with the dirty-face and the tartan skirt and the boy with the wounded hand who was frowning in his sleep.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“This is the forked tongue of grief again. It whispers in one ear: return to what you once loved best, and in the other ear it whispers, move on.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“Don’t envy things you wouldn’t actually want. Don’t absorb criticism from people you wouldn’t go to for advice. Don’t fear missing parties you would probably want to leave.”
― Matt Haig, The Comfort Book