More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The mariner’s hubris isn’t necessarily in his belief that he won’t die, but his belief that the worst the sea can do is kill him.”
Why was it always girls whose forms could not be trusted? Everything could be taken away from them in an instant.
The sea is treacherous, but women are even more treacherous.’”
“And, well, I suppose that’s partly why I don’t have much faith in the notion of permanence. Anything can be taken from you, at any moment. Even the past isn’t guaranteed. You can lose that, too, slowly, like water eating away at stone.”
be reckless—I was saving myself. What you think of as recklessness, I think of as survival. Sometimes it’s not very pretty. Skinned knees and a bloody nose and whatever else. You told me I don’t see myself clearly, but I do. I know what I am. I know that, deep down, there’s not much else to me but surviving. Everything I think, everything I do, everything I am—it’s just one escape act after another.”
“You’re not just one thing. Survival is something you do, not something you are. You’re brave and brilliant. You’re the most real, full person I’ve ever met.”
Men just say whatever they want and everyone believes them.”
I’ve spent my whole life fighting, even if no one knew about it. The daily battles I waged in the privacy of that house, making sure the mountain ash was blooming and the iron on the doors held fast . . . if I can survive that, I can survive journalists and academics.”
You don’t have to take up a sword. Survival is bravery, too.”
But if fairies and monsters were real, so were the women who defeated them.
every story is told in the language of water, in tongues of salt and foam.
The truth was very costly at times.
How terrible, to navigate the world without a story to comfort you.
