Legendborn

“Don't make your life about the loss. Make it about the love.”

“The most important thing you can do in this world, the most necessary thing, is to survive it. You can't do anything for anyone else if you don't take care of yourself first.”

“Love is a powerful thing, more powerful than blood, although both run through us like a river.”

“Some truths only tragedy can teach. The first one I learned is that when people acknowledge your pain, they want your pain to acknowledge them back. They need to witness it in real time, or else you're not doing your part.”

“Two faults. My race and my gender. But they are not faults. They are strength. And I am more than this man can comprehend.”

“Who's the literary nerd? The quoter or the one who recognizes the quote?”

“And then I unwind her.One strand for my mother.One for my father.One for me.I unravel the rage until it courses through my veins like fuel in an engine. I let it become a part of me, but not all of me. Hot, scorching pain under my skin, under my tongue, under my nails. I let it spread through me—until there is no more “Before” and no more “After.”I am her and she is me.”

“Why someone dies is not the same question as why they are gone.”

“Because death breaks out connection... death is not a thread. it is the sharp cut that severs us. Death separates us from one another, and yet holds us close. As deeply as we hate it, it love us more.”

“You are my king now, cariad”

“Everything has two histories. Especially in the South.”

“Piggyback.” “Excuse me?” “You heard me.” “Like that movie—” “Shut up.” “Churlish.” “Arrogant.”

“How does this boy navigate my emotions like a seasonal sailor, finding the clear skies and bringing them closer, when all I seem able to do is hold fast to the storms?”

“Some truths only tragedy can teach.”

“I recognize that sound. It's the sound of holding on to a cliff by the edge of your nails. The sound of barely containing a pain so immense that to look at it, to raise your own flesh and examine what's beneath, is to risk falling into a darkness you know you'll never escape.”

“Growing up Black in the South, it’s pretty common to find yourself in old places that just… weren’t made for you. Maybe it’s a building, a historic district, or a street. Some space that was originally built for white people and white people only, and you just have to hold that knowledge while going about your business.”

“They that would be a leader, let them be a bridge.”

“From buried lives to beaten ones. From blood stolen to blood hidden. I map this terrain's sins, the invisible, and the many, and hold them close. Because even if the pain of those sins takes my breath away, the pain feels like belonging. And ignoring it, after all I've just witnessed, would be loss.”

“Grief does strange things to people’s minds. This I know. One morning a couple of weeks after my mother died, my dad said he thought he could smell her cheesy grits cooking on the stove—my favorite and my mother’s specialty. Once, I heard her humming down the hall from my bedroom. Something so mundane and simple, so regular and small, that for a moment, the prior weeks were just a nightmare, and I was awake now and she was alive. Death moves faster than brains do.”

“power taken and not returned incurs a debt. And the universe, and the debt, will always come to collect, one way or another.”

“Sometimes, you say the awful thing quickly and without taking a breath because lingering is too painful.”

“Someone I care about is alive but hurt. Someone I like very much is right here in front of me, asking me to sit with him. It dawns on me that if I ignore that, or forget how important that is, than I truly will make the shadows my home.”

“Don’t make your life about the loss. Make it about the love.”

“How could I have risked so much for a lost little girl who probably needs as much therapy as I do?" He tilts his head, eyes going unfocused. "Well, that's not possible." He laughs again, but this time it's so self-deprecating it feels like my anger has nowhere to go. "No one needs as much therapy as I do.”

“Two faults. My race and my gender.But they are not faults. They are strength.”

“And when your people die, you have to listen to strangers speak your nightmare into existence.”

“It is always the gentle ones I fear for the most, those willing to bare their hearts, who grieve for others and feel happy for others’ happiness.”

“Each leap into nothingness, each hovering moment before the fall, call to spark a wild yearning inside my chest.”

“My mother's life has stopped. Shouldn't everything and everyone stop living too? - Legenborn”

“Typical anger can hinder or help. But the kind that burns in your gut? That’s fury. And fury is meant to be used.”