Elena

“I know how betrayal and disillusionment feel, when someone who could give you the world refuses even a tiny piece of it.”
― Mary Kubica, The Good Girl

“Besides,'' she said, "it was not a hero I was thinking of. If anybody, it was Catherine Vernon." "Whom you don't like. These women, who step out of their sphere, they may do much to be respected, they may be of great use; but " "You mean that men don't like them," said Hester, with a smile; " but then women do; and, after all, we are the half of creation — or more.”
― Mrs. Oliphant, Hester

“And Jane all her life would be interested in ordinary, unexceptional girls and what might happen to them. Her quietest heroine of all, Fanny Price, had ‘no glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty’, while Catherine Morland had ‘nothing heroic’ about her, and was ‘occasionally stupid’. Jane’s great achievement would be to let even the ordinary, flawed, human girls who read her books think that they might be heroines too.”
― Lucy Worsley, Jane Austen at Home: A Biography

“Far better to dare mighty things and fail mightily than to never dare at all.”
― Stephanie Thornton, The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora