The Horse and His Boy

A dare that lands because it names the fear, not the dream.

You could rattle the stars,“ she whispered. ”You could do anything, if only you dared. And deep down, you know it, too. That’s what scares you most.

Throne of Glass · Sarah J. Maas

The nothing-to-lose freedom of being robbed in a foreign country.

He looked around at the empty plaza again, feeling less desperate than before. This wasn’t a strange place; it was a new one…he had already traveled farther than any shepherd he knew. Oh, if they only knew how different things are just two hours by ship from where they are, he thought….As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure. “I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure,” he said to himself.

The Alchemist · Paulo Coelho

A city lit entirely by lamps, and the dark it can't explain.

In the city of Ember, the sky was always dark. The only light came from great floodlamps mounted on the buildings and at the tops of poles in the middle of the larger squares. When the lights were on, they cast a yellowish glow over the streets; people walking by threw long shadows that shortened and then stretched out again. When the lights were off, as they were between nine at night and six in the morning, the city was so dark that people might as well have been wearing blindfolds.

The City of Ember · Jeanne DuPrau