“People always think they know other people, but they don’t. Not really.”
Source: Going Bovine (2009), p. 178
Context: People always think they know other people, but they don’t. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won’t eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don’t know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel fucked up and sad for no reason at all.
“My favorite word is "redemption." I like both its meaning and the sound.”
Twenty-One Things You Don't Know About Me
Context: My favorite word is "redemption." I like both its meaning and the sound. My least favorite word is "maybe." "Maybe" is almost always a "no" drawn out in cruel fashion.
Source: Going Bovine (2009), p. 389
Context: Marisol does a silly dance with Balder and the screw, one in each hand, so that nobody gets the idea that she takes tins — or anything else, for that matter — seriously. 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.”
Source: Going Bovine (2009), p. 253
Context: You’ve been assigned an identity since birth. Then you spend the rest of your life walking around in it to see if it really fits. You try on all these different selves and abandon just as many. But really it’s about dismantling all that false armor, getting down to what’s real.
“But we can't go back. We can only go forward.”
Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty
Variant: One can never go back. One always has to move forward.
Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty
“Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.”
Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing
Source: The Sweet Far Thing
“I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.”
Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing
Source: The Sweet Far Thing
“In every end, there is also a beginning.”
Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty
Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty
“We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic.”
Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing
Source: The Sweet Far Thing