Lindsay

“You didn’t come.”

“You didn’t call.”

She looks down at their tangled hands. “Tell me, Luc,” she says. “Was any of it real?”

“What is real to you, Adeline? Since my love counts for nothing?”

“You are not capable of love.”

He scowls, his eyes flashing emerald. “Because I am not human? Because I do not wither and die?”

“No,” she says, drawing back her hand. “You are not capable of love because you cannot understand what it is to care for someone else more than yourself. If you loved me, you would have let me go by now.”

Luc flicks his fingers. “What nonsense,” he says. “It is because I love you that I won’t. Love is hungry. Love is selfish.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“life without books is a life not lived, Dior. There’s a magik like no other to be found in them. To open a book is to open a door – to another place, another time, another mind. And usually, mademoiselle, it’s a mind far sharper than your own.”
― Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Damned

“It was interesting for us to watch, how he didn’t even have to go anywhere in order to leave her.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“See, that divine plan shite is what the pulpit-hucksters feed you when things start to go wrong. After they've passed around the collection plate, of course. When your crops fail or your cancer spreads or whatever else you've begged him for doesn't come to pass. That's the solace they'll offer. It's God's will, they'll tell you. Part of the divine plan.

What they don't point out is, if he has a plan? There's no sense praying for anything. If His will be done is the golden rule, then God's going to do what he wants, regardless of how hard you beg him. And imagine, just for a second, the sense of entitlement it takes to ask him for anything in the first place. The fucking ego you'd need to think that this is somehow all for you. What if you ask for something that's not his will? You want him to alter the course of the divine plan? For you? See, that's the grift of it all. That's the genius. You get what you pray for? Huzzah, God fucking loves you. But your prayers go unanswered? Just wasn't part of the plan.”
― Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Vampire