You can't be afraid. You can be sad if you like. You can be angry. But it's the fear that'll freeze you in place.

I can almost see what Gabriel meant when he asked, 'What has the free world got that you can’t get here?' Almost. Freedom, Gabriel. That’s what you can’t get here.

I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.

Words like 'unputdownable' and 'irresistible' are simply not enough for Cat Winters's In the Shadow of Blackbirds. Days after finishing this story, it remains the first thought I have in the morning, and the thing that haunts me until I sleep.

There's a sort of dead passion in him. A spark that, had he more years to live, would be a wildfire.

Rhine. The river that, somewhere out there, has broken free.

Write words you’re willing to burn at the stake for. Write words you’d believe in even if the rest of the world didn’t.