Ana

“People who’ve been hurt often think they have some sort of right to go around hurting other people,” said Sumi. “They think trauma’s a toy to keep handing down forever. But the fact that someone hurt you and tied you up in knots doesn’t give you the right to do it to anybody else. I’m a formerly dead girl made of gingerbread and hope, and even I can see that.”
― Seanan McGuire, Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“And if you could constantly reinvent yourself, cut away the parts of you that ashamed or hurt you, then how could you ever come to really know someone else? Were people all just living paradoxes, keeping up an illusion just long enough to survive contact with others? Were people then all a series of lies in the end?”
― R.F. Kuang, Katabasis

“It doesn’t go away. It never will. But when it hurts, lean into it. It’s so much harder to stay alive. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to live. It means you’re brave.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God