“Forgive her for how her agony reveals itself, child. This is how blood magic works. Unconditional never meant perfect anyway.”

It has taken me some time to learn that although karma exists, you can let your hatred go, not by destroying your own magic but by letting it grow.

The worst story I know is my heart. The best story I know is my heart. Both these truths know how to exist together in ways I never thought I will learn. This is the quietest of victories.

Love someone who is kinder to you than you are to yourself.

Listen to me girl, you have castles inside your bones, coronets in your heart, if he threatens you with a battle, you raise him a whole war, the last time I checked, queens cover before no man.

Somedays I am more wolf than woman. And I am still learning how to stop apologizing for my wild.

And darling, I hope your remember to kiss the ghosts goodnight. They are only older versions of you that you have had to discard and forget.

Grandmothers are a gift not to be taken lightly. So many lose them, before they are old enough to know their magic. I am glad my bones were born with this knowledge.

That growth is simply learning how to suffer, gracefully, elegantly constantly moving and travelling without letting your pain tear you apart.

You need not fear the wolves you hide in your soul. They were made not to hurt you, but to protect you against this world.

To heal you must forgive your heart, your skin, your body, all of their mistakes.

To my inner child, I promise I am trying my best to heal from everything that hurt you. I promise I am trying to become the person you need me to be so we can both be whole.

Maybe living your truth will not make you happy all the time, but it will make you happy every day.

And they didn’t spend years painting your soul into masterpiece-like existence for you to waste it on someone who doesn’t appreciate you.

The rose is not everyone’s favorite flower, but that does not make it any less beautiful. There is a lesson for all of us in that.

There is a lightening in our bones and wildfire in our spirits and we will find a way despite it all to survive and thrive.

All my childhood heroes lived on the page. Now they live in me.

As to those who hoard gold and silver and spend it not in God’s path, give them, then, the tidings of a painful agony.

No, he was in agony, and he looked down at us – denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him – and in the greatest act of love in history, he STAYED. He said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely.

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

It’s been agony but I couldn’t have done it any other way.

The problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

Good writing … involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.