I am confident, I am capable, and I will not wait to be rescued by a woodsman or a hunter.

It's just that it's impossible to be a broken or whole person. You can only be a person. You can only exist, you can only belong to yourself, and you can only be responsible for your own happiness or belonging or whatever. That broken-part-piece-whole thing is just a trick of the mortal mind.

How could I possibly try to pretend the sunlight doesn’t exist, now that it’s taken so much of me?

Books didn't make me wallow in darkness, darkness made me wallow in books.

I became an ifrit to save the lives of my fellow jinn. What kind of life saver would I be if I let you sit here and wither away in paradise? Just an obstacle. Just an obstacle. I meet the ifrit's eyes. What happened to all your talk about birds and fish having nowhere to live? The ifrit shrugs. I suggest you start holding your breath, my friend, he says, then pushes through the hearing room doors.

My sister has the heart of an artist with a hatchet and an eye patch. And I, we both now know, have a heart that is undeniably, irreparably different.

I like libraries. It's a comfort that knowledge can be save for so long. That what we learn can be passed on.