Jeannette de Beauvoir

“But the reality is that it is impossible to explain, to verbalize, to articulate the fear that they instill in you. The people who judge, the people who criticize, who don’t get it—you have to understand, they’re coming at the situation from a position of safety, of security, of self-esteem. You cannot imagine, when you’re well and safe and contented, that you could ever feel otherwise. When you’re in it... it’s like a vortex, a dark, whirling whirlpool that swallows up everything that you ever thought was you, your thoughts, your values, your beliefs, and leaves you with an empty, shattered shell. And that shell, you realize painfully, gradually, is you.”
― Jeannette de Beauvoir, In Dark Woods

“I closed my eyes, but that didn't blur the images his words had evoked. "Oh, God," I murmured.
"God," he said, "had nothing to do with it at all.”
― Jeannette de Beauvoir

“princess. You’d have brought her the moon. Her or me, did”
― Tana French, Broken Harbor

“Hic scientia finit: Knowledge Stops Here.”
― Donna Leon, Blood from a Stone