—

“I swear to you that one day things will get better. One day you’ll learn to like who you are a little better, and that’ll be reflected in what other people see when they look at you. There will always be assholes, but we learn to fight back. That’s the most important thing—to not put your head down, to fight for the right to marry who you love, for the right to have your body respected regardless of what it looks like or what you’re wearing. To fight for the right to walk down the street without being attacked for the color of your skin.”
― Vitor Martins, Here the Whole Time

“I was in this weird space of wanting not to be alone and wanting not to be crowded, either.”
― S.K. Ali, Love from A to Z

“Genya—” David tried.
“Don’t you dare,” she said roughly, tears welling up again. “You never looked at me twice before I was like this, before I was broken. Now I’m just something for you to fix.”
I was desperate for words to soothe her, but before I could find any, David bunched up his shoulders and said, “I know metal.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Genya cried.
David furrowed his brow. “I … I don’t understand half of what goes on around me. I don’t get jokes or sunsets or poetry, but I know metal.” His fingers flexed unconsciously as if he were physically grasping for words. “Beauty was your armor. Fragile stuff, all show. But what’s inside you? That’s steel. It’s brave and unbreakable. And it doesn’t need fixing.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“Who are you writing for again?" Mr. Lee asks, arching a brow. He asked me this before. I know the answer he wants to hear. I write for myself. I'm not sure what this really means, though. I can't help caring about what people think, especially about my writing. "We have too many voices inside our heads. You have to pick out the ones that mean something to you. What story do you want to tell?”
― Dustin Thao