Lucy-May

“We draw our strength from the great oaks of the forest […] As they take their nourishment from the soil, and from the rains that feed the soil, so we find our courage in the pattern of living things around us. They stand through storm and tempest, they grow and renew themselves. Like a grove of young oaks, we remain strong.”
[…]
"The light of these candles is but the reflection of a greater light. It shines from the islands beyond the western sea. It gleams in the dew and on the lake, in the stars of the night sky, in every reflection of the spirit world. This light is always in our hearts, guiding our way.”
― Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest

“For this scribe has read a great many of these accounts and taken away another lesson: that to be a woman is to have your story misremembered. Discarded. Twisted. In courtyard tales, women are the adulterous wives whose treachery begins a husband's descent into murderous madness or the long-suffering mothers who give birth to proper heroes. Biographers polish away the jagged edges of capable, ruthless queens so they may be remembered as saints, and geographers warn believing men away from such and such a place with scandalous tales of lewd local females who cavort in the sea and ravish foreign interlopers. Women are the forgotten spouses and unnamed daughters. Wet nurses and handmaidens; thieves and harlots. Witches. A titillating anecdote to tell your friends back home or a warning.”
― S A Chakraborty

“The finality of a person's life confounded the ego. How could a body and mind that walked, talked, and had brilliant, witty thoughts suddenly cease to be? How could a body shrug off its mortal coil and become common carrion simply because the blood stopped pumping through the veins? How could the mind and all its memories become mere wisps of nothingness floating in the ether because the spark of thought no longer flared bright inside the cranium? The mystery of human death was too grand to be regarded as anything less than sacred by those facing their own mortality.”
― Luanne G. Smith, The Raven Spell

“People like to say they seek the truth. Sometimes they even mean it. The truth is they crave the soft, quilted comfort of a lie. Tell them they’re going to be rich or fall in love, and they walk away whistling. Give them the hard, unvarnished truth, and you’re looking at trouble.”
― Laura Shepherd-Robinson, The Square of Sevens