Athena

“She was wiser than she'd been before. Now she knew how fragile life and love were. Maybe she would love him for only this day, or maybe for only the next week, or maybe until she was an old, old woman. Maybe he would be the love of her life... or her love for the duration of this war... or maybe he would only be her first love. All she really knew was that in this terrible, frightening world, she had stumbled into something unexpected.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“He saw her beauty...but he looked past it. Either that, or he was smart enough to see that she wanted to offer more to the world than a pretty face.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Once you kill another human being there is no going back… it’s a bit like being reborn, I suppose. But no ordinary birth—it’s a metamorphosis. What emerges from the ashes is not a phoenix, but an uglier creature: deformed, incapable of flight, a predator using its claws to cut and rip.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Maidens