I was afraid I’d fail. So I didn’t work. — Ursula K. Le Guin

And fourteen—fourteen is such a fearful age, when you find out so fast what you’re capable of being, but also what a toll the world expects.

Josef liked to read books, not pack them.

He had waked her; he had given her what she lacked, and what few men could have given her: the sense of peril, which is the root of love.