Emily

“We killed Earth. Millions of us died, wiped out in horrific weather events, from starvation, or from exposure in the massive deserts that bloomed in the Great Heating Event. And worse, we killed each other, ravaged the land with bombs, no longer concerned with preserving humanity, let alone the environment. There was nothing left to save.”
― Meg Smitherman, Swallowed

“She had implied that she didn’t need men in order to exist. All she needed was me. In the world in which we lived, though, women didn’t exist except in relation to men. If a woman stepped outside the confines of the behavior assigned to her gender, it could be seen as a symptom of madness.”
― Rupert Thomson, Never Anyone But You

“What’s gender, anyway?” she went on after a moment. “It’s just a matter of organs and cycles and—what do you call them?—hormones. I refuse to allow myself to be defined by a few biological characteristics. When I stand in a room by myself, I’m not standing there as a woman. I’m a consciousness. An intelligence. Everything else is secondary.”
― Rupert Thomson, Never Anyone But You

“Pain can work from the outside in. I mean that sometimes what you see is pain. Pain in its cruelest, purest form. Without drugs or sleep or even shock or coma to dull it for you. You see it and you take it in. And then it’s you.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door