Winter

“Focusing on and sustaining life activities...jobs, budgets housekeeping etc. takes from me. It is an exhausting struggle; a desperate attempt to tread water while drowning.
Life drains my well. Special interests fill it back up. I need that time, I need that filling, that relaxing, that decompressing, in order to accomplish other tasks in my life.”
― Jeannie Davide-Rivera, Twirling Naked in the Streets and No One Noticed: Growing Up With Undiagnosed Autism

“I lie awake in my bed, clinging to the brightness I have known, fighting back the tide of darkness, the memories of blood and branding and horror, and the legacy of cruelty that runs in my own veins, shaping my own secret vow and wielding it like a brand against the darkness, whispering it to myself, over and over.

I will try to be good.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“Surprising yourself is a big thing for me—to go somewhere that I don’t even know I’m going.”
― Lily Tuck

“There are those who are awkward in the face of sorrow, fearing to say the wrong thing; to them, I say, there is no wrong in comfort, ever. A kind word, a consoling arm ... these things are ever welcome.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart