Alya

“We are more than half of humanity. We are not imitation people, or chameleons taking on protective male coloration, longing for the day when men go away and we can return to being our true, insectlike selves. We are here, now. We are just like you.”
― Nicola Griffith, Ammonite

“Sometimes people have to do new things, things that have never been done before. Everything your foremothers did was new once.”
― Nicola Griffith, Ammonite

“These people were utterly human. But what was human? Human was not just family dinners, human was also the Inquisitions of Philip, the extermination of the Mayans, the terrible Reconstruction of the Community. Human meant cruelty as well as love, human was protecting one’s own at the expense of others. Human also meant having the capacity to change.”
― Nicola Griffith, Ammonite

“The tribe, the tribe, nothing but the tribe. It was all she knew. I just didn’t matter to her, in the end. I belonged to the tribe, I was subhuman, won though everything in her heart told her otherwise. How can people do that?”

“Perhaps she did what she could to help.”

“She was my jailer.”

“She taught you to survive.”
― Nicola Griffith, Ammonite