The war had remade her. Reshaped her purpose. Why couldn’t she unmake it again?
If you think there’s a thing—anything—women didn’t do in the past, you’re wrong.
Let’s be real: if women were “naturally” anything, societies wouldn’t spend so much time trying to police every aspect of their lives
Light doesn’t always keep the dark things away,” Nyx said.
Men did not like women to weep. It reminded them of their own failings.
Just keep in mind,” Liaro said, “they’re not going to remember the words. They’ll remember how you made them feel. Make them feel something.
The monsters don’t live in the belly of the world like they all say. The monsters live inside of us. We make the monsters.
There is nothing I fear more than someone without memory. A person without memory is free to do anything she likes.
I have spent my life battling monsters. It was only in realizing that I was the monster, and choosing to destroy her, that I could save the world.
The secret to leadership is not to be a particularly intelligent person. It is to surround oneself with those far smarter than oneself. And try not to kill them.
War makes monsters of us all. But what happens to those of us who no longer wish to be monsters?
I’m not trying to be mean,’ Casamir says.’Intent doesn’t always matter.
All I am, and all I love, is war. I don’t know who I will be if I stop. The world, if it is to survive, needs a leader, not a warmonger. The world I want to make does not require me
He’s grown into quite the young man since you took him in.””You say that like being a man’s a good thing,” Nyx said.
And there is good money to be made when things are bad.
We must rewrite our story from one of fear to one of celebration.
We worship the same God and we carry the same sins.
What were all of them, really, but bits of something else? Bits of stars?
Ahmed turned, and leaned into him. Kissed him on the mouth again.“I’m pretty fucked up,” Eshe said.“It’s a good thing I’m perfect, then.
The motto above the lintel of the main entrance was in the raised script of the prayer language: My life for a thousand.She remembered swearing an oath with that at its core: My life for yours, for ours, for Nasheen. My life for a thousand.
I’d internalized an astonishing amount of misogyny growing up that I didn’t even recognize until my early twenties.
It was strange how you didn’t realise how much you loved a place until you had lost it completely.
There was a fine line between madness and intelligence.
They’d pay attention to me less. They’d judge me by gender, by looks, by weight before anything else. I automatically started every interaction at a disadvantage.
It was the secret to winning any contest, he said, in life or in the boxing ring – you just had to get up more than you fell down.
We all fight monsters, she knew. There was no shame in losing.
You started caring about somebody, you did stupid things.
It all came apart once you started caring for something outside yourself.
Every time Nyx thought she’d gotten out of the business of killing boys, she shot another one.
Because until you know what you want to be, other people are just going to keep trying to make you into something useful for them.
Nobody really knows what I am,” Nyx said. “Not until I put a bullet in their head.
Good luck to you,” he said, and she remembered how he had looked at her as she pinned Yah Tayyib, as if she was some kind of monster.Maybe she was.