Girls of Paper and Fire

I don't want an easy life. I want a meaningful one.

When the world denies you choices... you make your own

Instead of disappearing, she makes me feel reappeared. Reimagined. Her touch shapes me, draws out the boldness that had been hiding in my core.

They can take and break and steal all they want, but there is one thing they have no control over. Our emotions. Our feelings. Our thoughts. None of them will ever be able to control the way we feel. Our minds and hearts are our own. That is our power, Nine. Never forget it.

Falling in love is the most dangerous thing women like us can do.

Because if this is to be my fate, I'm going to walk boldly into it on my own two feet.

We might be Paper Girls, easily torn and written upon. The very title we’re given suggests that we are blank, waiting to be filled. But what the Demon King and his court do not understand is that paper is flammable.

I know what it means to dream about the past. To dream about things you have loved, and lost.

Perhaps being a traitor can be a good thing if you are betraying those who deserve it.

But time has a way of folding itself, like a map, distances and journeys and hours and minutes tucked neatly away to leave just the realness of the before and the now, as close as hands pressed on the either side of a rice-paper door.

It doesn't matter how beautiful the cage is. It's still a prison.

I don’t realize it until I speak it. And it’s different from the times I’ve said it before, or the way I’ve hoped it, as if dreaming something enough could birth it into being. I know it now with a certainty that has fitted into the lost core at the heart of me, as hard and angular as my hope was soft and shimmering. The King will not have me.

A war might be coming. But we have the wings to fight it.

In my land, we're known as Paper Girls... Easily torn, existing only for others to use and discard. But there's something that they've all forgotten about paper. It can light the world on fire... And make it burn.

I like to think that there's some good behind even the darkest sins. That death can be warranted if it paves the way for hope.

Remember, even that which seems impossible at first can be overcome by strength of mind and heart.

She looks so astonishing it’s almost unreal, as though she’d slipped out of a painting perfectly formed, a thing of beauty, of art—of bright, vivid life in this cold, still place.

But I don’t want an easy life. I want a meaningful one.

How painful it is to say good-bye to someone who has no idea you are leaving.

Everyone’s assumption is for women and men to be together, and yet here we are, human girls, the Demon King’s concubines. Surely love between two women wouldn’t be so strange?

They can take and steal and break all they want, but there is one thing they have no control over. Our emotions. Our feelings. Our thoughts. None of them will ever be able to control the way we feel. Our minds and our hearts are our own. That is our power.

Dzarja. Never has it felt more true. Because it appears I have found a new person to betray, and it might be the worst one yet. Myself.

I keep my promises, Lei. Whatever they might cost me.

A night of smoke and flames, the palace destroyed from the inside out by a girl with fire in her veins.

It's all about yin and yang," she said, stroking my hair in her slow calming way, her voice as sweet and delicate as summer rain. "Balancing your energy. When you're angry or upset, stop for a moment and close your eyes. Breath in slowly. Imagine as you do that the air you take in is bright and golden, as lovely and light as your eyes. Let that brightness fill your belly. Then, when you exhale, picture the darkness that had been within you--whatever it was that upset you -- and visualize it leaving your body as you release your breath.

Honor is in family, in hard work and care and love, in a small life well lived.

Her kisses heal the parts of me that the King broke. They tell me: You are strong, Lei. You are beautiful. You are mine. And always, most important: You are yours.

Does darkness not follow light, and light follow darkness, neither one truly ahead of the other?

Why help me? I’m...I’m Paper.” The fox-boy turns back to the door. “So?” he answers. “You need the help more than anyone.