Dresden Crace

“I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded—and how pitiful that was.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“There are stages to the process of being betrayed by your society. One is jolted from a place of complacency by the discovery of difference, by hypocrisy, by inexplicable or incongruous ill treatment. What follows is a time of confusion—unlearning what one thought to be the truth. Immersing oneself in the new truth. And then a decision must be made. Some accept their fate. Swallow their pride, forget the real truth, embrace the falsehood for all they’re worth—because, they decide, they cannot be worth much. If a whole society has dedicated itself to their subjugation, after all, then surely they deserve it? Even if they don’t, fighting back is too painful, too impossible. At least this way there is peace, of a sort. Fleetingly. The alternative is to demand the impossible. It isn’t right, they whisper, weep, shout; what has been done to them is not right. They are not inferior. They do not deserve it. And so it is the society that must change. There can be peace this way, too, but not before conflict. No one reaches this place without a false start or two.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“You want to meet your gods, you filthy cockroaches? Tell the evil sods that Molly Templar says hello when you see them.”
― Stephen Hunt, The Court of the Air

“Strength has no meaning unless it is used in the service of the weak. One stick may be snapped but the bundle is the community, and the community will never break.”
― Stephen Hunt, The Court of the Air