Quotes from work
A Great and Terrible Beauty

A Great and Terrible Beauty is the first novel in the Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray. It is told from the perspective of Gemma Doyle, a girl in the year 1895.

“Pippa's laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. 'Ha! Why do girls think being beautiful will solve every problem? Being beautiful just creates problems. It's a misery. I wish I were someone else.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“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.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“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.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“I know because I read. Might I suggest you try it?”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“They swoon over Tom, who preens for them, bowing, which sets them to blushing and giggling.
God help us all.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

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

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“One could argue that it's romantic to die for love. Of course, then you're dead and unable to take that honeymoon trip to the Alps with all the other fashionable young couples, which is a shame.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

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

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“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.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“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.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Warning: If you are insufferable, do not walk here. We shall eat you down to the marrow.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“I am dying a thousand cruel and unusual deaths as fifty pairs of eyes take me in, size me up like something that should be hanging over a fireplace in a gentleman's den.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Beauty, grace, and charm my foot. It's a school for sadists with good tea-serving skills.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“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.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Variant: 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.
Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“My cholera's acting up again.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“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.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“It isn't that we do what we want. It's that we're allowed to want at all.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I've got to think.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty