It is important to appreciate beauty, even when it is evil. - N. K. Jemisin

You can't lose faith you never had to begin with.
Ah. So you never believed in the Bright at all?
Of course I believed. Even now I believe, in principle. But when I was sixteen, I saw the hypocrisy in all the things the priests had taught me. It's all very well to say the world values reason and compassion and justice, but if nothing in reality reflects those words, they're meaningless.

The child in her wanted to do as she pleased, cling to impossible hopes. The woman in her wanted to make sound decisions, succeed even if it meant sacrifice. The woman would win; that was inevitable. But the child would not go quietly.

I had never been able to truly hate anyone who’d suffered, no matter what evils they’d done in the aftermath.