Jessie Burton

And here was another truth: I was lonely and I was angry, and rage and loneliness can end up tasting the same

She was a woman who’d done nothing wrong except exist.’

My whole life, no one had ever stopped to
listen,
to ask me a single question. They’d just looked at me, and thought they’d found their answer

My whole life, no one had ever stopped to
listen,
to ask me a single question. They’d just looked at me, and thought they’d found their answer

When beauty’s assigned you as a girl, it somehow becomes the essence of your being. It takes over everything else you might be. When you’re a boy, it never dominates who you can be.’

You see, remembering’s a blessing and a curse. You can’t erase your bad memories, but a life without regrets is a life unlived

What you remember and how you remember: it makes you who you are

But you can’t start a fresh chapter until you’ve ended the old one

I’d told Perseus that I was hiding, but maybe I wasn’t at all. Maybe I had found my space to simply be.

Maybe I hadn’t realised it, but I’d found a kind of peace.

‘Medusa, if there ever were someone, a boy, for example—’

‘
Why would there ever be a boy?’

‘If there ever were, you must never deny who you are, or pretend to be the woman you think he would want you to be. You’ll be walking on a lonely road that leads to nowhere.’