Atelfer

“You didn’t shame anybody into anything.” “Oh yes I did. I’m good for you that way. You have a tendency to back away from things otherwise.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“They too seemed permanent and never-changing, an untouched unreachable world high in space...”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“...by means of certain small scars rising along its trunk, and by a limb extending over the river, and another thinner limb growing near it. This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but that they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age...the old giants have become piggies while you were looking the other way.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“Learn to want something for yourself, Ma Xiuying. Not what someone says you should want. Not what you think you should want. Don’t go through life thinking only of duty. When all we have are these brief spans between our nonexistences, why not make the most of the life you’re living now? The price is worth it.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun