Libba Bray Quotes

“People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.”

“It is a giggle full of high spirits and merry mischief, proof that we never lose our girlish selves, no matter what sort of women we become.”

“The face staring back at me isn't beautiful but she isn't something that would scare the horses, either.”

“Oh, I've a love, a true, true love, who waits upon yon shore… and if my love won't be my love, then I will live no more…”

“I should never be left alone with my mind for too long.”

“The world is only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your little cave, that's one less fighter on the side of fair.”

“I changed the world; the world changed me.
Everything you do comes back to you. When you affect a situation, you are also affected.”

“The world expected girls to pluck and primp and put on heels. Meanwhile, boys dressed in rumpled T-shirts and baggy pants and misplace their combs, and yet you were suppose to fall at their feet? Unacceptable.”

“In a world like this one, only the random makes sense.”

“She never utters a sound even when she's crying, and that makes me a little sad. Doesn't seem right. When you cry, people should hear you. The world should stop.”

“The mere suggestion of fame and fortune casts a glamour all its own. It is rather alarming how quickly people will turn someone else's fiction into fact in order to support their own fictions of themselves.”

“You can never know about about your own destiny: are the people you meet there to play a part on your oun destiny, or do you exist just to play a role in theirs?”

“I'm sorry,' he says simply. 'People make mistakes, Gemma. We take the wrong action for the right reasons, and the right action for the wrong reasons.”

“I changed my mind. I don’t want to be an inveshtigative journalist anymore. I want to be a professional rum drinker.”

“There are people who do that,” Duff said. He’d barely sipped his rum.

“Really? What do you call them?”

“Alcoholics.”

“When the world moves forward too fast for some people, they try to pull us all back with their fear.”

“Did you hear? You are free."
Yessss. Choice. It is a fine thing. And I choose to take you back, Most High.”

“And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”

“There are no safe choices. Only other choices.”

“Sometimes we seek that which we are not yet ready to find.”

“I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.”

“What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?”

“I know because I read… Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.”

“It is funny how you do not miss affection until it is given, but once it is, it can never be enough; you would drown in it if possible.”

“These are hard times. The world hurts. We live in fear and forget to walk with hope. But hope has not forgotten you. So ask it to dinner. It's probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation.”

“I'm one of those people who has to write. If I don't write, I feel itchy and depressed and cranky. So everybody's glad when I write and stop complaining already.”

“Balder holds up a completely blank rune. Wyrd. The beginning and the end. Fate.”

“Here is our favorite equation: Us plus Them equals All of Us. It is very simple math. Try it sometime.”

“People always think they know other people, but they don’t. Not really.”

“My favorite word is "redemption." I like both its meaning and the sound.”

“And just like that, something in the cosmos shifts. A butterfly flaps its wings in South America. Snow falls in Chicago. You give an idiot a stupid magic screw and it turns out to be a necessary part after all.”

“You’ve been assigned an identity since birth.”

“There is an ancient tribal proverb I once heard in India. It says that before we can see properly we must first shed our tears to clear the way.”

“But we can't go back. We can only go forward.”

“When I dream, I dream of him. For several nights now he’s come to me, waving from a distant shore as if he’s been waiting patiently for me to arrive. He doesn’t utter a word, but his smile says everything: I’ve missed you.”

“Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right.”

“Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.”

“I run after her, not really giving chase. I’m running because I can, because I must.
Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop.”

“How I'd love to get away from here and be someone else for a while in a place where no one knows or expects certain things from me.”

“I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.”

“In every end, there is also a beginning.”

“These are hard times. The world hurts. We live in fear and forget to walk with hope. But hope has not forgotten you. So ask it to dinner. It's probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation.”

“To those who will see, the world waits.”

“We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic.”

“You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it.”

“And for a moment, I understand that I have friends on this lonely path; that sometimes your place is not something you find, but something you have when you need it.”

“How do you invent a religion?” Evie asked.

Will looked over the top of his spectacles. “You say, ‘God told me the following,’ and then wait for people to sign up.”

“Really, being a librarian is a much more dangerous job than you realize.”

“I wonder how many times each day she dies a little.”

“I wish to live for myself. I should never want to be trapped.”

“The trouble with morning is that it comes well before noon.”

“I'm sorry, Gemma. But we can't live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you.”

“There's a lot about discovering who you are and how difficult that is. And it never stops.”

“Reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all.”

“But aren't many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect?… aren't the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned?”

“There is nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he's right.”

“I love you for who you are, not who the world thinks you should be.”

“If you tell them what they want to hear, they don't bother to try to see.”

“It's knowing I'll never have what she has--a beauty so powerful it brings things to you. I fear I will always have to chase things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.”

“May I suggest that you all read? And often. Believe me, it's nice to have something to talk about other than the weather and the Queen's health. Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.”

“I don't think you should die until you're ready. Until you've wrung out every last bit of living you can.”

“Why is it that some secrets can drown you while some pull you close to others in a way you never want to lose?”

“Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended with vigilance, else it dies out.”

“Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, because it is morning; it is morning and there is so much to see.”

“We create the illusions we need to go on.”

“It's possible to pretend I'm someone other than who I am, and if I pretend long enough, I can believe it.”

“So, now I've been to see a drug counselor who told me I need to lay off the drugs and talk about my feelings, and a shrink who heard what I had to say and immediately put me on drugs.”