Jen

“In her 1979 essay collection The Language of the Night, Ursula K. Le Guin paraphrases Tolkien: “If a soldier is captured by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?… If we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape and to take as many people with us as we can.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories

“And in the night, before they sleep, he presses his lips to Teach's silken ear and tells him secrets - like the bottle rocket hidden under his bed - knowing their safe. And Teach, sometimes, tells him some back.”
― S.L. Coney, Wild Spaces

“A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“Visualizing a happier, more just world is a direct assault on the forces that are trying to break your heart. As Le Guin says elsewhere, the most powerful thing you can do is imagine how things could be different … What if?”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories