Libba Bray citations

Page 3

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

“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.”

“I want to ask him if it’s possible that a girl can be born unlovable, or does she just become that way?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”