I don't need a protector,” Etta said. “I need a partner.

Good ideas had in the dark were generally best left there.

What good is honour when greed eats away at its foundations?

It's our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises.

How do you fight against a mountain? How do you move it when you don't even have a shovel?”
“Maybe you don't have to move it,” Etta said, folding the gown over the lid of the trunk. “Maybe you have to climb it.

But hey, what's life without a little adversity?"
That had to have been the fakest attempt at optimism since my fourth grade teacher tried reasoning that we were better off without the dead kids in our class because it'd mean more turns on the playground swings for the rest of us.