I collect quotes from fiction like pieces of broken jewelry, except instead of stashing them in the vanity drawer, I squirrel them away in notebooks and my Notion account. With no particular order or theme, here are just a few from the last year or so.

There are no happy endings, he knew, because nothing ends.

A Fine and Private Place, Peter S. Beagle

Perhaps in the darkest times all we can do is refuse to be part of the darkness.

A Brightness Long Ago, Guy Gavriel Kay

Still, it felt good to be silent. And it felt good to be alone. And it felt good to be uncontained, the way a bird must feel when it realizes that the thing constraining it was nothing more than an eggshell— delicate and fragile, and just waiting to be cracked open.

When Women Were Dragons, Kelly Barnhill

Stories are why anyone does anything.

A Marvellous Light, Freya Marske

To be in contact with someone else’s pain was to risk feeling it yourself, unless you severed the connection by hating them. When most people’s greatest desire was to avoid pain, of course they would rather hate.

He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan

Some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.

The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemison

Reason…is only a drug, and…its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief.

Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

You can’t turn back. There is no answer behind you. You fear what you cannot name. So look at it and find a name for it. Turn your face forward and learn. Do what must be done.

The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia A. McKillip

Go to bed; tired is stupid.

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin