“You own your body. You own your body. You own your body. Your center and your edges are yours and yours alone. In this world – this world of rape culture of ingrained misogyny and violence done against girls and women – you will encounter and absorb messages your entire life that place you on trial for the crime of existing as female in this world. That will question your right to wear or speak or move through the world in the way that you do. That will seek to harm you in ways large and small. As a woman, you will hold stories that sometimes feel too painful to hold. As your mother, that brings me to my knees. I grant you the strength to know that this too, you will survive. I promise you I will protect you with every ounce of life in my body. And where I cannot protect you from this world, I will love you inside of it – fierce and holy and precious beyond all knowing.”

“The leaders have the responsibility to protect and hold in high esteem the law and virtues of the land.”

“I wish you were small again, so I could hold you in my arms and comfort you. But you are grown, and you know that for some things there is no comfort.”

“Trust is not a gasoline-soaked blanket that succumbs to the matches of betrayal, never able to be used for its warmth again; it’s a tapestry that wears thin in places, but can be patched over if you have the right materials, circumstances, and patience to repair it. If you don’t, you’re always the one who feels the coldest when winter comes.”

“Faith is a fortified wall.”

“So, the darkness hid the little girl in herself,to protect her from the wolves with the human mask on their faces.”

“If you neglect your fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives, then don’t be surprised when the Creator is forced to neglect you. Neglect, and you will be neglected. Protect, and you will be protected. Reject, and you will be rejected. Love all, and all that love will be mirrored by the Creator and reflected back onto YOU.”

“There are two kinds of people in this world, son. Those who save lives, and those who take lives.””And what of those who protect and defend? Those who save lives by taking lives?””That’s like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can’t protect by killing.”

“Not everyone is bad in life. But everyone can be affected by bad things. We all need help at certain points in our life, why we need it is no right of others to judge whether it is a good or not reason to help.”

“with limits, you have to know which ones you are supposed to accept, and which ones you must surpass. Do not waste your time trying to find the knowledge of the universe, that is Gods place and you cannot surpass it. Do spend time getting better at what you are good at and trying out what you are bad at. Limits are either for protection, or for shattering. There is no ‘in between’. If there was, I highly doubt the world would be like it is today.”

“There is a social responsibility for those in the know to protect those that do not know.”

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind.”

“Madlen came to sit beside her on the bed. “Lady Queen,” she said with her own particular brand of rough gentleness. “It is not the job of the child to protect her mother. It’s the mother’s job to protect the child. By allowing your mother to protect you, you gave her a gift. Do you understand me?”