I am not your subject or your servant, and if you want a cowering mouse for a wife, go find someone else who can turn silver to gold for you. - Naomi Novik

We're all greedy, but children make it easier to be. We feel it's only right to give them everything we can grab, even when you know that anything you feed your own child still comes out of someone else's mouth.

And I wasn’t old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon.

They all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers. They weren't alone in the world, mattering to no one but themselves. It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse. I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them-- this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn't a whole man.