Haley

“The difference was not that one was a pessimist and the other an optimist, it was that one's pessimism had led to an ethos of fear, and the other's pessimism had led to a noisy, fractious disdain for Everything-That-Was. One shrank, the other flailed. One toed the line, the other crossed it out. Much of the time they were at loggerheads, and because Willy found it so easy to shock his mother, he rarely wasted an opportunity to provoke an argument. If only she'd the wit to back off a little, he probably wouldn't have been so insistent about making his points. Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world.”
― Paul Auster, Timbuktu

“It was the dread that comes about when you are allowed to have something that seems costly and yet you're not asked for payment.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“With such a hell in your heart and your head, how can you live? How can you love?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“We are the granddaughters of the witches you weren't able to burn.”
― Tish Thawer, The Witches of BlackBrook