Alexandra

“They could no longer look at the world and not see stories, histories, layered everywhere like centuries’ worth of sediment.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“The bees are at work int he boiling air, legs fat with pollen the priesets say they stole. But her bees are no thieves.

The bees. They are their own. It was one of the first lessons they taught her, even as she coaxed them to the skeps. They are not dumb beasts: they have their own mind even if it is the mind of the king bee. This is why they are spoken of so often in church, their obedience, their duty.
...

but Lisbet knows what only those who tend to them know. That wildness is the key to their success, that freedom sweetens their honey. That you cannot truly keep bees. You can only make them want to stay.”
― Kiran Millwood Hargrave, The Dance Tree

“Agnethe falls to her knees on the stone, the dome of her head tilted back, her arms draped out at her sides in supplication. Lisbet has never seen someone pray in such a pose. When she benders her neck to speak to God, she feels the aim is to make herself as small as possible, turning inwards to find some tiny voice that perhaps sometimes she believes is from heaven, but is more often her mother's. She fails even at carrying God inside her like others seem to. But Agnethe prays like in the holy stories, as though God is everywhere, and she is showing herself as broadly and as boldly as she can.”
― Kiran Millwood Hargrave, The Dance Tree

“New words in English were a game to him, for in understanding the word he always came to understand something about English history or culture itself. He delighted when common words were, unexpectedly, formed from other words he knew. Hussy was a compound of house and wife. Holiday was a compound of holy and day. Bedlam came, implausibly, from Bethlehem. Goodbye was, incredibly, a shortened version of God be with you.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel