Jen

“Kindness toward strangers is rare in North Korea. There is risk in helping others. The irony was that by forcing us to be good citizens, the state made accusers and informers of us all.”
― Hyeonseo Lee, The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story

“Parents don't always like to admit that things have changed. They want the world to be exactly the way it was before their children went away on these life-changing adventures, and when the world doesn't oblige, they try to force it into the boxes they build for us.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“This world is unforgiving and cruel to those it judges as even the slightest bit outside the norm. If anyone should be kind, understanding, accepting, loving to their fellow outcasts, it’s you. All of you. You are the guardians of the secrets of the universe, beloved of worlds that most will never dream of, much less see … can’t you see where you owe it to yourselves to be kind? To care for one another? No one outside this room will ever understand what you’ve been through the way the people around you right now understand.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“That's because Narnia was a Christian allegory pretending to be a fantasy series, you asshole," said one of the other boys. "C.S. Lewis never went through any doors. He didn't know how it worked. He wanted to tell a story, and he'd probably heard about kids like us, and he made shit up.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway