Julie

“But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“It took me a long time to understand that what I had wanted was not a picture of something perfect. I already had that. What I had wanted was the feeling inside the pictures, the thing I had been trying to buy and drink and eat and not eat and fake my way to all my life. I wanted what everyone wanted. I wanted love.”
― Swan Huntley, We Could Be Beautiful

“Who's the Devil?"
Frances crouches down as if she were talking to Trixie.
"That's something I'll never tell you, Lily, no matter how old you get to be, because the Devil is shy. It makes him angry when someone recognizes him, so once they do the Devil gets after them. And I don't want the Devil to get after you."
"Is the Devil after you?"
"Yes."
"Jesus can beat the Devil."
"If God wants."
"God is against the Devil."
"God made the Devil."
"Why?"
"For fun."
"No, to test us."
"If you know, why are you asking me?"
"Daddy says there's no such thing as the Devil, it's just an idea."
"The Devil lives with us."
"No he doesn't."
"You see the Devil every day. The Devil hugs you and eats right next to you."
"Daddy's not the Devil."
"I never said he was. ..." Frances has got a dry look, tinder in the eye; her voice is a stack of hay heating up at the center, her mouth a stitched line. "I'm the Devil."
This is the moment Lily stops being afraid of anything Frances could ever say or do again. Stops being afraid of anything at all. She reaches out and takes Frances's hand. The white hand that always smells of small wildflowers, lily of the valley. The hand that has always done up Lily's buttons and laces, and produced wondrous objects. She holds Frances's hand and tells her,
"It's okay, Frances.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees

“Still indomitable was the reply - "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad - as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth - so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane - quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre