She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)

by Shelley Parker-Chan

If she had to learn in order to survive, then she would learn.

It wasn’t something she wanted so much as it was an escape from what she feared.

The body became used to exercise, particular sounds and sensations, or even physical pain. But it was strange how shame was something you never became inured to: each time hurt just as much as the first.

For a moment they stood there in bitter acknowledgment of it, feeling that likeness ringing through the space between them. The one reviled for not being a man, the other for not acting like one.

Aren’t you risking your life right now to bear and raise a child? A woman gambles all of herself, body and future, when she marries. That’s more courageous than any risk a bureaucrat takes when it concerns only his face, or his wealth.”

“Learn to want something for yourself, Ma Xiuying. Not what someone says you should want. Not what you think you should want. Don’t go through life thinking only of duty. When all we have are these brief spans between our nonexistences, why not make the most of the life you’re living now? The price is worth it.”

him. A man could want anything the world offered and still have a chance, no matter how small, of achieving it. For all he had acknowledged her as a being capable of desire, he hadn’t seen her reality: that she was a woman, trapped within the narrow confines of a woman’s life, and everything that could be wanted was all equally impossible.

Not-wanting is a desire too; it yields suffering just as much as wanting.

are you fool enough to believe the future will match your dream of it, with no consideration of the reality of the situation?

Destroying what someone else cherished never brought back what you yourself had lost. All it did was spread grief like a contagion.