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“Did I ever tell you” had become my five favorite words. They signaled that I was about to be transported, carried on the magic of someone else’s words, into the past.”
― Genevieve Kingston, Did I Ever Tell You?

“To be a boy opened doors that would never open for me, shielded him in a way where my own status as a woman had stripped me naked.”
― June Hur, The Red Palace

“In truth, at first it is a protective stance, a shrinking from further pain, because I am drained limp from crying, and to speak about it would be to cry again. But later it is because I want to sit alone with my grief. I want to protect—hide? hide from?—these foreign sensations, this bewildering series of hills and valleys.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“Hopefully in the next lifetime, we will meet again,” he said, glancing down at me. “And in kinder circumstances.” I gazed up and offered him a small smile. “I hope so, too.”
― June Hur, A Crane Among Wolves