Olivia

“Let’s face it, a lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“A happy child."

Daedalus sat, drank a swallow of wine. "For now, he is. He is too young to know himself a prisoner." Those white scars seemed to flare on his hands. "A golden cage is still a cage."

"And where would you go, if you might escape?"

"Wherever would have me. But if I may choose, Egypt. They are building things that make Knossos look like a mudflat. I have been learning the language from some of their traders on the docks. I think they would welcome us."

I looked into his good face. Not because it was handsome, but because it was itself, like fine metal, tempered and beaten for strength. Two monsters we had fought side by side, and he had not wavered. Come to Aiaia, I wanted to say. But I knew there was nothing for him there.

Instead I told him, "I hope you will get to Egypt one day.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But having mastered the art of descending the stairs to a gathering of admirers, she had yet to master the art of ascending the stairs alone. Perhaps no one has.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“How about peaches, dear?” murmurs Madame Manec, and Marie-Laure can hear a can opening, juice slopping into a bowl. Seconds later, she’s eating wedges of wet sunlight.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See