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“I forgave everybody, I gave up, I got drunk.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“One day I woke up and realized no amount of love, care, pain, hurt, anger, or retribution could ever transform those who are evil into good or kind people. That day I let go; I stopped caring for them, gave up any hope for their souls, and knew they were never worthy of me or my time.”
― Ken Poirot

“When you truly love or want what you are pursuing, holding on can never be harder than giving up.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I don't see how I can move on from loving her when she gave up everything for me. For the cause.' He shook his head. 'Every time I hook up, I remember it.”
― Sarah J. Maas, House of Earth and Blood

“I gave up many times but I never quit.”
― Ken Poirot

“We are not your enemies, Feyre,' Lucien pleaded. 'Things got bad, Ianthe got out of hand, but it doesn't mean you give up-'

'You gave up,' I breathed.

I felt even Rhys go still.

'You gave up on me,' I said a bit more loudly. 'You were my friend. And you picked him- picked obeying him, even when you saw what his orders and his rules did to me. Even when you saw me wasting away day by day.'

'You have no idea how volatile those first few months were,' Lucien snapped. 'We needed to present a unified, obedient front, and I was supposed to be the example to which all others in our court were held.'

'You saw what was happening to me. But you were too afraid of him to truly do anything about it.'

It was fear. Lucien had pushed Tamlin, but to a point. He'd always yielded at the end.

'I begged you,' I said, the words sharp and breathless. 'I begged you so many times to help me, to get me out of the house, even for an hour. And you left me alone, or shoved me into a room with Ianthe, or told me to stick it out.'

Lucien said too quietly, 'And I suppose the Night Court is so much better?'

I remembered- remembered what I was supposed to know, to have experienced. What Lucien and the others could never know, not even if it meant forfeiting my own life.

And I would. To keep Velaris safe, to keep Mor and Amren and Cassian and Azriel and... Rhys safe.

I said to Lucien, low and quiet and as vicious as the talons that formed at the tips of my fingers, as vicious as the wondrous weight between my shoulder blades, 'When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.'

A pulse of surprise, of wicked delight against my mental shields, at the dark membranous wings I knew were now poking over my shoulders. Every icy kiss of rain sent jolt of cold through me. Sensitive- so sensitive, those Illyrian wings.

Lucien backed up a step. 'What did you do to yourself?'

I gave him a little smile. 'The human girl you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord's pet.'

Lucien started shaking his head. 'Feyre-'

'Tell Tamlin,' I said, choking on his name, on the thought of what he'd done to Rhys, to his family, 'if he sends anyone else into these lands, I will hunt each and every one of you down. And I will demonstrate exactly what the darkness taught me.

There was something like genuine pain on his face.

I didn't care. I just watched him, unyielding and cold and dark. The creature I might one day have become if I had stayed at the Spring Court, if I had remained broken for decades, for centuries... until I learned to quietly direct those shards of pain outward, learned to savour the pain of others.

Lucien nodded to his sentinels. Bron and Hart, wide-eyed and shaking, vanished with the other two.

Lucien lingered for a moment, nothing but air and rain between us. He said softly to Rhysand, 'You're dead. You, and your entire cursed court.'

Then he was gone.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“To escape the Prison, I made myself mortal. Immortal as you are, but... mortal compared to- to what I was. And what I was... I did not feel the way you do. The way I do now. Some things- loyalty and wrath and curiosity- but not the full spectrum.' Again, that faraway look. 'I was perfect, according to some. I did not regret, did not mourn- and pain... I did not experience it. And yet... yet I wound up here, because I was not quite like the others. Even as- as what I was, I was different. Too curious. Too questioning. The day the rip appeared in the sky... it was curiosity that drove me. My brothers and sisters fled. Upon the orders of our ruler, we had just laid waste to twin cities, smote them wholly into rubble on the plain, and yet they fled from that rip in the world. But I wanted to look. I wanted. I was not built or bred to feel such selfish things as want. I'd seen what happened to those of my kind who strayed, who learned to place their needs first. Who developed... feeling. But I went through the tear in the sky. And here I am.'

'And you gave all that up to get out of the Prison?' Mor asked softly.

'I yielded my grace- my perfect immortality. I knew that once I did... I would feel pain. And regret. I would want, and I would burn with it. I would... fall. But I was- the time locked away down there... I didn't care. I had not felt the wind on my face, had not smelled the rain... I did not even remember what they felt like. I did not remember sunlight.'

It was to Azriel that her attention drifted- the shadowsinger's darkness pulled away to reveal eyes full of understanding. Locked away.

'So I bound myself into this body. I shoved my burning grace deep into me. I gave up everything I was. The cell door just... unlocked. And so I walked out.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin