"reina realized the sound in her head, the scream, was her own. Anger or anguish, misery or mourning, all of the above. She felt the softness of earth beneath her hands and realized she was kneeling prostrate, channeling her pain into the sympathy of sodden ground. She felt something lashing gently over her forearms, slithering out from her pals. Like vines; like threads of consequence."
and/or
"Yes, Callum thought, I understand it now, Tristan, the meaning of life, it all makes sense. We are given exactly as much time as we need to be a human as we are, and that's it. That's the entirety of the magic. We're not gods, or maybe you are, or Reina is, but I'm not a god, Tristan, I'm just very sad and stupid! I have been looking for inspiration and it turns out I'm not inspired, I'm lazy! I only want to hold your hand! I don't wan't to rule the world, I don't want to control it, I don't even want to influrence it. I want to sit beside you in a little garden, I want to put your needs before mine, I want to laugh at your jokes, even the bad ones, and bury my head in proverbial sands."
and/or
“This was it, the chronic condition—the only meaning Parisa had left in life. It wasn’t a secret society, it wasn’t an ancient library, it wasn’t an experiment that had taken two decades to design, it was waking up every fucking morning and deciding to keep going. The tiny, unceremonious, incomparable miracle of making it through another goddamn day. The knowledge that life was mean and it was exacting. It was cruel and it was cursed; it was recalcitrant and precious. It was always ending. But it did not have to be earned.”
second piece from my review of @olivieblake 's the atlas series. I love these characters so deeply, and these three in particular, in their twisted discoveries of their personnal philosophies, and what ever can let them survive, was inspiring to read, and meant a lot to me.
all three piece's speedpaints are up on my youtube channel!:)