Unconditional love: childhood’s greatest magic. - N. K. Jemisin

There was no point in making myself suffer unnecessarily. As a mortal, there would be pain enough in my life, whether I sought it out or not.

It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy, it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all—but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.

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.