Catherynne Valente

But Dess wasn’t shining. He was just a dumb tart in someone else’s frock staring down failure like you could ever make failure blink. Failure was here before you and she’ll be here after you and she won’t even notice you go

Only the uncool have the requisite alone time to advance their species.

There’s no real power in this—it’s just something I do to try to make myself less afraid when the monsters are near