The Grimrose Girls

it's okay to be French in like, fiction, but not in real life.

Step aside. While you were busy being heterosexual, I studied the art of the blade." - Rory

yuki laughed, because it was the natural response. everyone assumed it was easier, that she wouldn't have to navigate the difficulties of love. even her friends thought that, but it only came back to bite her in the end. it's not like you understand what it's like to love someone, do you? because in the end, they would have someone, they would all have their counterparts, and yuki was going to be alone.

Books rarely disappointed, even when they had terrible endings, because she could just move on from it and find another she liked. Books had been safe.

It was easier to be a hurtful, sharp thing, poking others so that she didn't have to think about what it was doing to herself.

Once you speak, you can’t take it back,

It's not like you understand what it's like to love someone, do you?

They are an allegory of what happens in real life. Girls get beaten up and die. It's a warning, to live chastely. That if you're a good girl, you get to live" - Nani

We are going to save them all.

Her loss was pure, untainted by knowing and loving Ariane

Rory breathed deep, settled herself. She knew her own pain. She knew her body. She knew how it worked, even when she felt like it was betraying her, trying to make her weaker. Rory wasn’t weak because of her pain, because of what her body was going through. She had survived it. Each sleepless night, each morning where she got up and she thought she wouldn’t manage to walk, each day where she thought she’d reached the limit. She always surpassed the limit. Even when her body tried betraying her, Rory was still strong. She was strong in spite of it, maybe because of it, because she was going to survive it. This body was hers.

What’s happening here?” “Cleaning,” Rory said, raising her head slightly from her position in the bed. Yuki frowned. “Should I take you to the infirmary?

She’d taken the train, almost got off in the wrong country—

Her love life—if she could call it that—was off-limits, even for herself. Her heart was locked behind silver gates and protected by a forest of thorns and possibly a dragon.

There were muscles under her shirt, her dark brown skin showing, and Rory had caught herself admiring them more than once. Not that she would admit it. Rory Derosiers was very much into not admitting anything.

Now you're just fooling yourself. No one is better because they're not angry, because they don't hurt people. It's just what you need to do to cope. You do whatever it takes. Whatever you have to do to survive." - Penelope

...most important in the story: the path, the darkness that they had been through. Happily ever after never covered what came after that, how half the heroes could be scarred for the rest of their lives. It was falsehood sold to keep little girls dreaming about something that didn't exist.

Make it true. You deserve that. That’s the girl I want to know. And if other people can’t love you for what you are, then they don’t deserve you at all - Penelope, The Grimrose Girls

People may love you, but it’s not real love if they don’t know who you are. - Penelope, The Grimrose Girls

sometimes people are evil or French and can't be redeemed