Haley Jean

“It's uncomfortable that this isn't all good or all bad or a happy ending or a sad ending, but just a mess that everyone muddled through. It's very painful to start loving someone when holding on to the idea of hating them keeps you safe.”
― Fern Brady, Strong Female Character

“Realizing your own mother was incapable of truly seeing you—of loving you for who you are rather than as an extension of herself—is a bitter pill to swallow. It’s the death of a fundamental childhood hope, the one where if you just try hard enough, Mommy will love you unconditionally. But in a strange way, this understanding has also been incredibly liberating. I now know that I could never have been “good” enough or “perfect” enough to make Ruby truly happy or proud. The insatiable void I was trying to fill wasn’t created by me, and it wasn’t mine to fix. That realization, as painful as it is, is the first step on the path to healing—for me, if not for her.”
― Shari Franke, The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

“Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“It may not have been by your hand that he suffered, but it was by your ideals.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea