Libba Bray Quotations | Page 4

...I do have to wonder what sort of childhood the Grimm brothers endured. They are not a merry bunch of storytellers, what with their children roasted by witches, maidens poisoned by old crones, and whatnot.

I had a friend who said, "You don't have an internal critic. You have an internal sadist."

What kind of person doesn't let you have gummi bears?

She bestowed the blessing of a wild girl's lips.

What did I do to make Mommy leave?” “You didn’t do anything. This isn’t your fault.” “Then why?” she’d wailed. “I don’t know,” her daddy had said, and he looked so sad. “It isn’t fair!” “No, it isn’t, baby. Not by a mile. The world’s 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 own little cave, that’s one less fighter on the side of fair.

In this man’s smile was all the unfairness of the world in its thuggish seduction. “Just come with me. We’ll take care of you.” “No, you won’t.” Taylor stroked the man’s cheek. She reached her arms up to cradle the back of his head and, with the skill of a champion, she broke his neck. Then she dragged him into the bushes, took his gun and walkie-talkie, and kept moving.

He frowns. "A dance with the carnivorous Felicity? Why? Has she eaten all the other available gentlemen?

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

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

Do not be tempted by English roses. Their beauty fades, but their thorns are forever.

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

I knew it. You’re an alien,” said her former best friend, the pale, bespectacled creature with the spectacular cleavage. “Yes, I’m an alien and I still made cheerleader. And now I’m going to steal your boyfriend to prove girls can’t really be friends.” “I sat back timidly when you torched my house, killed my parents, and ate my dog. But now you’re stealing my boyfriend? That’s a step too far!

We have work to do if you are not to be a total failure like high-waisted, acid-wash jeans.

People see what they want to see when they need to.

You know what else is hot?" said a nameless blonde as she put her arm around the one black girl. "What?" "Bisexuals." "Totally. Well, not like real bisexuals who are just sort of your everyday people, but, like, the kind of bisexuals you see in magazines wearing nothing but body paint and kissing both boys and girls to promote a new single." "Totally, totally hot.

What makes a girl a girl? What makes a guy a guy? Do you have to be what they want you to be? Or do you stop and listen to that voice inside you? I know who I am. I'm Petra West. And I'm a girl. You want me to sleep somewhere else, fine. Whatever. But I'm not going to pretend to be somebody I'm not. I've done enough of that.

Can we really conquer chaos so easily? If that were so, I should be able to prune the pandemonium of my own soul into something neat and tidy rather than this maze of wants and needs and misgivings that has me forever feeling as if I cannot fit into the landscape of things.

Adina gave a little shriek. "That fish just swam past my leg! Creepy! Where did it go?" "To your right! Two o'clock! Get it!" "You are officially the most bloodthirsty vegetarian ever.

We have traveled through space and time. We have been many places. Visited many worlds. And there is good news: the acoustics everywhere are terrific.

Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one's is watching them so they can be who they really are

You are truly Satan's sequined spawn.

Its so daunting to walk into a classroom or a school auditorium. Its like the worlds weirdest blind date. I know all the students are thinking, Who is this tool standing up in front of us?

You don't know me, dude," he says, not smiling this time. Gonzo examines his cards, prepping for his next move. "People always think that 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 ****ed up for no reason at all.

As a kid, I imagined lots of different scenarios for my life. I would be an astronaut. Maybe a cartoonist. A famous explorer or rock star. Never once did I see myself standing under the window of a house belonging to some druggie named Carbine, waiting for his yard gnome to steal his stash so I could get a cab back to a cheap motel where my friend, a neurotic, death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting for me so we could get on the road to an undefined place and a mysterious Dr. X, who would cure me of mad cow disease and stop a band of dark energy from destroying the universe.

What you want can be yours. But you must first know what it is you want.

There's no such thing as nothing. In every nothing, there's a something. In fact, there could be everything!

The glow dies down, and she's standing at the end of my bed--the one who's been following me around leaving feather messages. I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny, riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides and a worn Great Temolo decal near the left shoulder. Her wings are a crazy black-and-white-checkered pattern, like they've been spray-painted at a body shop to look like hipster sneakers.

We've barley stepped into the bright glow of the realms when everything goes dark...

When I dream, I dream of him.

There is a dualism inherent in democracy--opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balance takes a great deal of energy.

The vicar, whose name is Reverend Waite, leads us in prayers that all begin with 'O Lord' and end with our somehow not being worthy-sinners who have always been sinners and will forever more be sinners until we die. It isn't the most optimistic outlook I've ever heard but we're encouraged to keep trying anyway.

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.

Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.

Heaven's brightest and best-loved angel, who was cast out for inspiring a rebellion against God. Having lost Heaven, Lucifer and his rebel angels vowed to continue fighting here on earth." "I don't understand why he had to fight. He was already in heaven." "True. But he wasn't content to serve. He wanted more." "He had all he could ask for, didn't he?" Ann asks. "Exactly." Miss Moore states. "He had to ask. He was dependent upon someone else's whim. It's a terrible thing to have no power of one's own. To be denied.

Do you think they missed him terribly when he fell? Did God cry over his lost angel, I wonder?

All things are possible.

True affection and love have a purity which shall always prevail over bigotry.

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.

She is the elephant’s eyebrows,” Evie whispered appreciatively. “Those jewels! How her neck must ache.” “That’s why Bayer makes aspirin,” Mabel whispered back, and Evie smiled, knowing that even a socialist wasn’t immune to the dazzle of a movie star.

There's no time to be modest. Reason will not work here. Without warning, I kiss Kartik. His lips, pressed firmly against mine, are a surprise. They are warm, light as breath, firm as the give of a peach against my mouth. A scent like scorched cinnamon hangs in the air, but I'm not falling into any vision. It's his smell in me. A smell that makes my stomach drop through my feet. A smell that pushes all thought out of my head and replaces it with an overpowering hunger for more.

It's only his thumb brushing slowly across the lower edge of my lip, but it's as if time slows and the sweep of that thumb below my mouth takes forever. It is no spell that I know of, but it holds such magic, I can scarcely breath. He pulls his hand away fast, aware of what he's done. But his touch lingers.

This is the world we live in, Gemma, for better or for worse. Make of it what you can," he says, and I pull him to me.

But...you could have whatever you wished." "Exactly," he says, nuzzling my neck. "But," I say, "you could turn stones to rubies or ride in a fine gentleman's carriage." Kartik puts his hands on either side of my face. "To each his own magic," he says and kisses me again.

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

The beast attempts a beautific look that could be mistaken for a bout of painful wind.

What Hamlet suffers from is a lack of zombies. Let us say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up—Ho-HO! Now you’ve got something that stirs the, um, something that stirs things that are stirrable. BOOM! A pack of ravenous flesh-eaters breaks open their heads and sucks out their eyeballs. No need for iambic pentameter because they are grunting, groaning annihilators of humanity with no time for meter. You’re not asleep in the back of English class anymore, are you? This is what I’m talking about. Zombies. Learn it, live it, love it.

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.

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

A place to keep all your secrets

There in the city's steam-and-smoke-smudged harbor is the most extraordinary sight of all: a great copper-clad lady with a torch in one hand and a book in the other. It is not a statesman or a god or a war hero who welcomes us to this new world. It is but an ordinary woman lighting the way- a lady offering us the liberty to pursue our dreams if we've the courage to begin.

We create the illusions we need to go on.

They would place their hands together inside the circle so that they could walk in each other's dreams. It forged a bond that could not be broken. The circle represents love in eternity. For there is no beginning and no end.

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

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

She's no beauty, mate

In books, the truth makes everything good and fine. The good prevail. The wicked are punished. There is happiness. But it's not like that really, is it?" "No," I say. "I suppose it only makes everything known.

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

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

The world is a lie...not you and me.

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?

Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't know yet what power feels like. But this is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us.

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.

The police have asked for my help. There's been a murder." "A murder! Oh, my. Let me just change my shoes," Evie said excitedly. "It won't be a minute.

She holds up a finger. "I'm getting to it. Don't rush a girl in the middle of her exposition.

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...

For the first time, I notice the lax skin at Mrs. Nightwing's jaw, the fine down that lies upon her cheek like the imprint of a childe's hand, and I wonder what it must be like watching yourself soften under the years, unable to stop it. what it's like measuring your days in perfecting girls' curtsies and drinking nightly glasses of sherry, trying to keep up with the world as it pulls you spinning into the furure, knowing you are always one step behind it.

...I think we should find some kind of shelter; a cave or something." "I don't want to do that! What if there's like, a creature living in the cave?" Tiara said. "Seriously, I saw this show once where these people were stranded on an island and there were these other people who were sort of crazy-slash-bad and there was this polar bear creature running around." "What happened?" Miss Ohio asked. "I don't know. My parents got divorced in the middle of season two and we lost our TiVo.

I invited myself. Thought this table needed some class.

I wouldn’t expect you to get it, Daisy. You don’t look at anything besides Photoplay—and even then somebody’s gotta explain the pictures to you.” Daisy’s mouth hung open in outrage. “Well, I never!” “Yeah, that’s what you tell all your fellas, but the rest of us aren’t buying it. Go away, now, Daisy. Shoo, little fly!

You can’t blame a fella for kissing the prettiest girl in New York, can you, sister?” Sam’s grin was anything but apologetic. Evie brought up her knee quickly and decisively, and he dropped to the floor like a grain sack. “You can’t blame a girl for her quick reflexes now, can you, pal?

Just once I’d like to meet a fella who isn’t a phony. Somebody who doesn’t wanna buy me a fur so he can show me off to his boys.

She smiled as sweetly as a show poster for the glorified, all-American Ziegfeld girl just before dumping her second cigarette into Wally’s fresh cup of coffee.

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.

Sometimes I see things, I think. Out of the corner of my eye, taunting me, and then it’s gone. And dreams. Such horrible dreams. What if something terrible happened to me? What if I am damaged?" The rain is a cool kiss on my sleeve as I link my arm with hers. "We’re all damaged somehow.

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

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.

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

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?

The desperation meeting the silence with its unmasked wish.

Truth casts a spell of its own.

Memphis—it’s just a bird. Birds fly around, brother. It’s what they do. It’s not following you, and it’s not a sign. Unless you really did give it candy and flowers, in which case you are one strange brother.

What took you so long?” Will asked when Evie came panting into the room. He and Jericho had assembled a stack of books, which they were tucking into Will’s attaché case. “I walked to Jerusalem for the Bible. I knew you’d want an original,” Evie snapped.

Petra turned to her. "Everybody lies about who they are. Name one person here who isn't doing that and I will drop out right now!" Shanti felt that snake of truth coil around her legs, threatening to squeeze. "I didn't mean..." "No one ever does." Petra said, shoving the baton back at Shanti.

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.

Adina appealed to the sky. "We asked for rescue and you sent us incompetent rockstar pirates with a broken ship and perfect abs?" "Thank you, God," Petra said.

We all walk in a land of dreams. For what are we but atoms and hope, a handful of stardust and sinew? We are weary travelers trying to find our way home on a road that never ends. Am I a part of your dream? or are you but a part of mine?

They see her differently now, as somebody. And isn't that what everyone wants? To be seen?

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.

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

Next time we see you, you’ll be on trial for some ingenious crime!” Dottie said with a laugh. Evie grinned. “Just as long as they know my name.

She loved attention. It was like a glass of the best champagne—bubbly and intoxicating—and as with champagne, she always wanted more of it. Still, she didn’t want to seem like an easy mark. “If you must know, I’ve come to join a convent,” Evie said, testing him.

Oh, sure. Of course, they say now that we’ve got Freud and the motorcar, God is dead.” “He’s not dead; just very tired.

Hey,” the cabbie yelled. “How’s about a tip?” “You bet-ski,” Evie said, heading toward the old Victorian mansion, her long silk scarf trailing behind her. “Don’t kiss strange men in Penn Station.

Dead bodies are such trouble,” Evie said with a little sigh, and Mabel had to turn her head away so as not to laugh.

He took comfort in the neon signs, the wild strands of jazz creeping out of clubs whenever happy swells of people pushed through the doors in their finery.

Evie hadn’t always felt that way. For a year after James had died, she’d cupped his half-dollar pendant between her pressed palms and prayed fervently for a miracle, for a telegram that would say GOOD NEWS! IT WAS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE, AND PRIVATE JAMES XAVIER O’NEILL HAS BEEN FOUND, SAFE, IN A FARMHOUSE IN FRANCE. But no such telegram ever arrived, and whatever possible faith might have bloomed in Evie withered and died. Now she saw it as just another advertisement for a life that belonged to a previous generation and held no meaning for hers.

The ladies pass the timee with gossip and hearsay. This is what they have in place of freedom- gime and gossip. Their lives are small and careful. I do not wish to live this way. I should like to make my mark. To venture opinions that may not be polite or even correct but are mine nonetheless. If I am to be hanged for anything, I should like to feel that I go to the gallows on my own strength.

No one can steal our dream.

Mawah meenon ne le plus poohlala," I say with an affected bow.

I change the world, the world changes me.