When Heroes Fall

“This is what you must understand, Elena. They are wrong. Women bear the trials of their men, the delivery of their babies, the weight of their families. Women are extraordinarily strong. So, you must trick the men into giving you power. Do not tell them you are strong, and do not fight them with words because words can be undone. Fight the injustice with action, lottatrice mia, because action can be understood in any language, by any man.”

“I’m wearing heels bigger than your dick, so if this is a pissing contest, I think it’s safe to say I win,”

“You know, it is the contrast between two opposites that heightens them both to keener glory. You shouldn’t be afraid to be coarse, just as I shouldn’t be afraid to be gentle. Too much of one thing is boring, Elena.”

“My therapist told me there was a name for what I had, that furious drive for perfection that had marked my entire life. Kodawari, the Japanese word for the relentless pursuit of perfection. I didn’t so much want to be perfect––which I was aware enough to know was an impossibility––as I wanted to seem perfect.”

“Death was nothing. Sacrifice, that was the real killer.”

“I had always found, if you could understand something, it was almost impossible to hate it because then you could empathize with it.”

“But you see, I am not a professional, and there is something about all that studied perfection that makes me eager to break her.”

“But I cried then, and I discovered just how many types of tears there were. Angry tears, so salty they burned my hot cheeks. Wallowing tears, the kind that seeped into my mouth and made me nauseous as if I’d swallowed too much sea water. Lonely tears as I realized how few people I had in my corner, how few loved ones I could call my own. As I realized much of that solitariness was my fault because I’d pushed so many people away out of fear of being hurt.”

“Not everything is so black and white, Elena,” I murmured as I slid a lock of her deep red hair between my fingers. “Between the hero and the villain, there is the anti-hero. A person who may do evil deeds and seem unscrupulous, but who, within their own set of morals, possesses a big heart and the willingness to protect that which they know to be good.”

“you are just a girl in a very large world that owes you nothing. Not one thing in your life will come easy. This is the way of girlhood in Napoli. I wish it was not so. I wish I could have given you a better start, but understand, every woman must be a fighter, Elena, because history has tricked men into thinking women are less.”

“He looked criminal, filled with wicked intent and handsome enough to tempt the pope to sin.”