Libba Bray Quotes

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“There is a time in every life when paths are chosen, character is forged. I could have chosen a different path. But I didn’t. I failed myself.”

“Your mother and I do not approve of drinking. Have you not heard of the Eighteenth Amendment?”

“Prohibition? I drink to its health whenever I can.”

“But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all?”

“Who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy?”

“But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on.”

“Because 'You're perfect just the way you are,' is what your guidance counselor says. And she's an alcoholic.”

“Women who have power are always feared.”

“I salute your spunk, but I question your sanity,” Sam said.”

“War." Gorgon spits the word. "That is what they call it to give the illusion of honor and law. It is chaos. Madness and blood and the hunger to win. It has always been thus and shall always be so.”

“The dark does not weep for itself because there is no light. Rather, it accepts that it is the dark.”

“I'm just saying it's not all sand castles and ninjas.”

“Weren't you wearing a purity ring when we got here? Aren't you supposed to be saving yourself?" Shanti asked.

"Yeah," Mary Lou answered. "And then I thought, for what? You save leftovers. My sex is not a leftover, and it is not a Christmas present.”

“I hear they feed you in Sing Sing,” Evie muttered. “Three squares a day.”

“Evangeline,” Will said with a sigh. “Charity begins at home.”

“So does mental illness.”

“I thought research would be more glamorous, somehow. I'd give the librarian a secret code word and he'd give me the one book I needed and whisper the necessary page numbers. Like a speakeasy. With books.”

“Eve didn't choose to eat the apple. She was tempted by the serpent."
"Yes," I argue, thoughts coming out half-formed. "But… she didn't have to take a bite. She chose to.”

“Did God ever cry over his lost angel, I wonder?”

“To each his own magic.”

“‎Just because you're funny doesn't mean you get to be cruel.”

“I fear I will always have to chase the things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.”

“People will believe anything if it means they can go on with their lives and not have to think too hard about it.”

“How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage, for that matter.”

“I refuse to let the past find me here.”

“Any librarian or scholar will tell you: Close is not the same as accurate.”

“Evie replied with an eye-roll. “Do you think you can manage to not steal anything while I’m gone?”

“The only thing I’m trying to steal is your heart, doll.” Sam smirked.

“You’re not that talented a thief, Sam Lloyd.”

“You want to know what pain is? Try running out of Advil when you've got a Category Five period. I've had cramps that would make grown men beg for a bullet between the eyes."
- Jennifer, "Beauty Queens”

“Dude, this is a stoner conversation and we're not even high”

“Because you can't keep up the illusion forever," I say. "No one has that much magic.”

“I had thought Felicity dangerous a moment ago, when she felt powerful. I was wrong. Wounded and powerless, she is more dangerous than I could imagine.”

“The night's chilly breath tickles up my neck and finds my ear, whispering secrets only the wind knows.”

“I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all.”

“Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.”

“People aren't always what you want them to be”

“What do you feel? I’ve never been asked this question once. None of us has. We aren’t supposed to feel. We’re British.”

“I'm an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.”

“Think: who has vans, huh? Soccer moms and serial killers.”

“Because it is morning, it is morning, and there is so much to see.”

“A gentle breeze catches in the branches then and I hear it, soft and low, a murmured prayer--Gem-ma, Gem-ma--and then the leaves bend down and trail delicate fingers across my cold cheeks.”

“When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt.”

“I change the world, the world changes me.”

“We are all unkind from time to time. We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds.”

“That's what living in their world is-a big lie. An illusion where everyone looks the other way and pretends that nothing unpleasant exists at all, no goblins of the dark, no ghosts of the soul.”

“If God has nothing better to do than punish schoolgirls for a bit of tomfoolery, then I've no use for God.”

“And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try.”

“All things are possible.”

“I shan't ever understand your willingness to lie down and die," Felicity bars. "If you won't at least try to fight, I have no sympathy for you.”

“Maybe that's what real friendship is -- getting so used to people that you need to be annoyed by them.”

“She knew what it was to wait for someone who would never come home. She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away.”

“My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.”

“I’m not interested in being polite. It’s false.”