Aza

“I could hear no more. I couldn't see, couldn't think, couldn't speak. This couldn't be happening again. How could it possibly be happening again? Was I, like my eldest daughter, caught in some delusion, except in my waking dream everyone I loved was to be taken from me?”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“This is what you remember of the people you love when they're gone—the ways they knew you that no one else did—even you. In that way, their passing is a death of a piece of yourself.”
― Jeff Zentner, In the Wild Light

“I know you want her to be alive--you feel like you need her to carry on. But the body in the coffin is just that: a body, the shell of the person you love. The essence of Mrs. Quince, the one you know and love, is all around us, in nature and the stars, in every recipe of hers that you cook, and deep inside your heart....No matter how many times we say that someone is dead, the fact is we simply can't imagine a world without them.

[Audrey Landon, to Nell Brown]”
― Jennifer Ryan

“Everyone deserves to die—even that abominable man I cut down only minutes ago.” He kneels across from me and reaches out, caressing the skin that he just so recently healed. “To live is to die,” he adds. “That was the agreement you made when you came into this world. You cannot have one without the other. All your life, all your suffering, all your loss—it was all for this.” He gestures to the dead around us, his wings spreading wide. “You all have been running towards me your entire life.”
― Laura Thalassa, Death