Mariam

"I am the gray now."

"A woman's lies of kindness are better than the truth of cruelty."

"Some people are not worth sacrificing for."

"I am this, and I am okay with that."

"Women like us, we endure."

"What is the worst that can happen to a woman but death?"

"I am no longer that woman she remembers, the woman she had tried to save. I am not even the woman I pretended to be for Rasheed's sake."

"If there is a God, he would forgive me for many things. But not for this."

"Suffering can harden you, or it can open your heart."

"Endurance is not the same as strength, but it requires its own kind of courage."

"Kindness is a choice, and sometimes it is the hardest choice to make."

"There is no honor in what I do. But there is necessity."

"I was the color of his passion, he said. His desire."

"The flowers are long dead here. But I remember them."

"We are all women. We all suffer the same."

"I have lived a life of unhappiness, but now I choose otherwise."

"We are not so different, you and I."

"The world has no use for girls like us."

"A child born of rape is still a child."

"Forgiveness is a luxury we cannot afford."

"There is a certain dignity in despair."

"Kindness is a form of resistance."

"The past cannot be rewritten, only accepted."

"Choices made under duress are still choices."

"There is no shame in what I'm doing. There is only shame in how I was born."

"Perhaps this is just a woman's lot, to live with ghosts."

"It is a terrible thing to love someone, I think. There is nothing worse."

"Forgiveness is a luxury that women like us cannot afford."

"It always is the ones in the middle that suffer the most."

"The only reward for obedience is more demands."