Libba Bray Quotations

'Pastoralia' by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book.

You know that moment in 'The Matrix' when Neo takes the red pill and is plunged into the real world? That's what it felt like when I first read 'Watchmen' - like someone was taking a can opener to my head to make room for Moore's audacious brilliance.

Sitting in my favorite coffeehouse with a new notebook and a hot cup of java is my idea of Heaven.

Im a techno moron. I need help just to plug in my video camera.

Any book that can help you survive the slings and arrows of adolescence is a book to love for life; 'The Catcher in the Rye' did just that, and I still do love it.

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

We're comfortable with women in certain roles but not comfortable with women expressing anger or fully accepting their power. The most daring question a woman can ask is, 'What do I want?'

We're still expected to color within the lines of accepted femininity, and women who step out of those lines are usually attacked, whether verbally or physically.

I'm one of those people who has to write. If I don't write, I feel itchy and depressed and cranky. So everybody's glad when I write and stop complaining already.

My joke is that my father was a minister and my mother was an English teacher, so I'm trained to see the world in terms of symbols, which is hard when you just want to make toast.

So much of the literature we had to read for high school English class was filled with victimized, tragic, symbolic women who spurred the plot forward with their inevitable shunning/death/shunning-followed-by-pregnancy-followed-by-death timelines.

I got married in Florence, Italy. My husband and I were in love but totally broke, so we eloped and got married in Italy, where he was going on a business trip. We had to pull a guy off the street to be our witness. It was incredibly romantic. Florence is still one of my favorite cities in the world.

I grew up doing theatre and spent a long time as a playwright. I still think very visually when I write.

I was a big reader as a kid, but it was 'Charlotte's Web' that showed me you could feel as if you were actually living inside a book.

I'm related to Davy Crockett on my mom's side. Honest.

Naming my favorite books feels like naming a favorite child - impossible.

'The Catcher in the Rye.' When I was a teenager, that was my book; yes, somebody gets it, somebody gets adolescence.

When you live in Brooklyn, if you throw a rock, you'll hit a writer - Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem, Paul Auster.

I love to be scared. Not, 'Hey, I think I smell smoke...' scared, but creepy, paranoid, what's-that-out-there-in-the-dark, ghost story scared. It's no surprise that I was the girl who got invited to the slumber parties because I could be counted on to tell a tale to scare the bejesus out of you.

My dad was a Presbyterian minister. Yes, I am one of those dreaded P.K.s - Preacher's Kids. Be afraid.

I feel like I'm speaking with my therapist.

I think there's such an overlap between (Victorian) culture and Southern culture, ... There is repression and darkness and (a hint of) 'What's going on behind that respectable veneer?'

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.

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.

When you looked up to the sky and cried 'Why?' sometimes the sky shrugged, yet other times it answered with warm assurance of linked hands.

You set fire to my house, killed my family, and ate my dog. But steal my boyfriend? That's a step too far.

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

One can never go back. One always has to move forward.

Oh, I didn't think it wise to hide it. Might not be able to find it again," I say, cheerily. "It's sitting in plain view on your chair in the great hall. I do hope that was the best place for it.

Didn't you have any sadistic nannies who told you these tales to keep you quiet and well behaved at night? Heavens, what's to become of the Empire if governesses have lost their touch for scaring the wits out of their girls?

When you peeled back the skin, you were dealing with bone and muscle, blood and nerve endings. It was all the same. She liked the beautiful logic of the circulatory system, the elegance of the neurological, and the fierce warrior spirit of the heart. The body had rules and it had quirks.

Pastoralia by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. Its one of the weirdest books Ive ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book.

J.T Woodland, known as “the cute one” in The Corporation’s seventh-grade boy band, Boyz Will B Boyz. Due to the success of their triple-platinum hit, “Let Me Shave Your Legs Tonight, Girl,” Boyz Will B Boyz ruled the charts for a solid eleven months before hitting puberty and losing ground to Hot Vampire Boyz.

We've left the moment. It's gone. We're somewhere else now, and that's okay. We've still got that moment with us somewhere, deep in our memory, seeping into our DNA. And when our cells get scattered , whenever that happens, this moment will still exist in them. Those cells might be the biulding block of something new. A planet or star or a sunflower, a baby. Maybe even a cockroach. Who knows? Whatever it is, it'll be a part of us, this thing right here and now, and we'll be a part of it.

Men have feelings too, you know. You bruise the petals of my manflower.

This is how the fire starts. This is how we burn.

Agent Jones switched to the big screen and a grainy video of MoMo sitting at his enormous desk, a swivel-hipped Elvis clock ticking behind his bewigged head. 'Death to the capitalist pigs! Death to your cinnamon bun-smelling malls! Death to your power walking and automatic car windows and I'm With Stupid T-shirts! The Republic of ChaCha will never bend to your side-of-fries -drive -through-please-oh-would-you-like-ketchup-with-that corruption! MoMo B. ChaCha defies you and all you stand for, and one day, you will crumble into the sea and we will pick up the pieces and make them into sand art.

Her eyes take on that suspicious, wounded look girls get when they know they've fallen off the top rung of friendship and someone else has passed them, but they don't know when or how the change took place.

If this were a movie, I would bust a secret move so fierce the entire place would be razed to the ground. I'd finish with something snappy like "And don't forget my soda, punk" while I strolled off into the night.

My dad was a Presbyterian minister. Yes, I am one of those dreaded P.K.s - Preachers Kids. Be afraid.

I feel like I swallowed a Magritte. Like on the inside, I'm made of clouds and floating eyes, green apples, and slowly rising men in bowler hats.

Yes, go on. Leave. You're always coming and going. The rest of us are stuck here. Do you think he'd still love you if he knew who you are? He doesn't really care—only when it suits him.

The hand you hold the longest is your own.

A man bumps me on his busy way without so much as an apology. But that is all right. I forgive you, busy man about town with the sharp elbows. Hail and farewell to you! For I, Gemma Doyle, am to have a splendid Christmas in London town. All shall be well. God rest us merry gentlemen. And gentlewomen.

I will never, ever drink whiskey again. From now on, it's strictly sherry.

I'm going to eviscerate you and leave your organs on a pike in the yard as a warning to those who wear large jewelry.

I hate this place,” Tiara whimpered. “It’s super creepy. Like a haunted Chuck E. Cheese’s where the games all want to kill you and you never get your pizza.

He told me that once, in the war, he’d come upon a German soldier in the grass with his insides falling out; he was just lying there in agony. The soldier had looked up at Sergeant Leonard, and even though they didn’t speak the same language, they understood each other with just a look. The German lying on the ground; the American standing over him. He put a bullet in the soldier’s head. He didn’t do it with anger, as an enemy, but as a fellow man, one soldier helping another.

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.

No one had ever said anything like that to Evie. Her parents always wanted to advise or instruct or command. They were good people, but they needed the world to bend to them, to fit into their order of things. Evie had never really quite fit, and when she tried, she’d just pop back out, like a doll squeezed into a too-small box.

I told myself it was the snow—she couldn’t possibly get to Philadelphia on the roads. I told myself a hundred lies. Children do that. It’s amazing the sorts of things you’ll make yourself believe.

Will was making a speech, something about having been young and careless once, the sort of thing old-timers said when they issued a deathblow, as if they thought their sanctimonious ramblings disguised as empathy would be welcomed, but Evie was only half listening.

It keeps her purity vacum-sealed to preserve its freshness for her future husband.

On the Bowery, in the ornate carcass of a formerly grand vaudeville theater, a dance marathon limps along. The contestants, young girls and their fellas, hold one another up, determined to make their mark, to bite back at the dreams sold to them in newspaper advertisements and on the radio. They have sores on their feet but stars in their eyes.

Clothing left on the bed unfolded. Books stained with coffee spots. Tabs not paid until the last possible second. Boys kissed and then forgotten in a week’s time.

There are times when one friend requires the blind faith of another...

With each shimmy, the bugle beads on their scandalously revealing costumes swung and shook. It was the sort of display Evie knew her mother would have found appalling—an example of the moral decay of the young generation. It was sexual and dangerous and thrilling, and Evie wanted more of it.

I’m from the health department. You’ve heard of Typhoid Mary? This fella’s got enough typhoid to start his own colony.

Theta blew out another plume of cigarette smoke. “Not interested. Love’s messy, kiddo. Let those other girls get moony-eyed and goofy. Me? I got plans.

There is a hideous invention called the Dewey Decimal System. And you have to look up your topic in books and newspapers. Pages upon pages upon pages…” Uncle Will frowned. “Didn’t they teach you how to go about research in that school of yours?” “No. But I can recite ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ while making martinis.” “I weep for the future.” “There’s where the martinis come in.

There is nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he's right.

She was tired of being told how it was by this generation, who’d botched things so badly. They’d sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. Love your parents. All is fair. And then they’d sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them. Still they lied, expecting her to mouth the words and play along. Well, she wouldn’t. She knew now that the world was a long way from fair. She knew the monsters were real.

In them, she saw the sham of her life laid out like a book, the foolish belief that she, that anyone, could escape the consequences of this world, could flee from death. That was the deceit. The true serpent in the garden.

He wanted to hit something or someone. He wanted to burn up the whole world, heal it, and burn it down again.

They kept the lie going, and the people loved it.

Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?" "What's the point of that, Miss?" the waiter said. "Tomorrow morning," Mabel said.

People tend to think that hate is the most dangerous emotion. But love is equally dangerous,” Will said. “There are many stories of spirits haunting the places and people who meant the most to them. In fact, there are more of those than there are revenge stories.

For once, Evie didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t really thought of her uncle as very human. He was more like a textbook who occasionally remembered to put on a tie. But it was clear that he was, indeed, human, with a deep wound named Rotke.

There is no greater power on this earth than story.” Will paced the length of the room. “People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense—words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions—words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.” Will grabbed the sheaf of newspaper clippings he kept in a stack on his desk. “This, and these”—he gestured to the library’s teeming shelves—“they’re a testament to the country’s rich supernatural history.

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.

You have a steady fella?” Sam asked after a bit. “No fella can hold me for long.” Sam gave her a sideways glance. “That a challenge?” “No. A statement of fact.

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.

If there was one truth Evie had learned in her short life, it was that forgiveness was easier to seek than permission. She didn’t plan to ask for either one.

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

The line between faith and fanaticism is a constantly shifting one,” Dr. Poblocki said. “When does belief become justification? When does right become rationale and crusade become crime?

The wolf was at the door. His shadow spilled into the room, taking it over.

You couldn't be perfect enough to keep the world from betraying you.

And just as I begin to believe that all is well, there is some subtle change in the light. The room takes its true shape. I fight to go back to that blissful ignorance, but it is too late. The dull pain of truth weights my soul, pulling it under. I am left hopelessly awake.

Might. Is there any opiate more powerful than that word?

In school, they would tell you that life wouldn’t come to you; you had to go out and make it your own. But when it came to love, the message for girls seemed to be this: Don’t. Don’t go after what you want. Wait. Wait to be chosen, as if only in the eye of another could one truly find value. The message was confusing and infuriating. It was a shell game with no actual pea under the rapidly moving cups.

He smiles sadly. "Now I know my destiny." "What is it?" "This." He draws me in to him in a kiss. His lips are warm. He pulls me tighter in his embrace. The roots sigh and release their hold on my waist and the wound in my side is healed. "Kartik," I cry, kissing his cheeks. "It's let me go." "That's good," he says. He makes a small cry. His back arches, and every muscle in his body tightens.

Free the snow globes!

They misspelled 'party.' How evil genius can they be?

Greetings, ax murderer! I was just wondering how you like your eggs?

It's always darkest before the ultimate sparkle.

Life don’t come to you, Memphis. You gotta take it. We have to take it. Because ain’t nobody handing it to us.

No one can live in the light all the time.

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.

The man in the shop peered disapprovingly at Evie through the glass. She pumped her arms and legs up and down in imitation of a marching band, gave the man a salute, and continued her meandering walk to the museum.

Hot off the presses, today’s headlines: The love of your life does not approve of my wanton flapper ways,” Evie said in a voice of affected mystery. “Really, Mabesie. You might want to reconsider—he is a bit of a killjoy.

Evie didn’t mind yelling, but she hated feeling judged. It got under her skin and made her feel small and ugly and unfixable.

Theta crashed next to them on the thick zebra-skin rug. “I’m embalmed.” “Potted and splificated?” “Ossified to the gills. Time for night-night.

What happened to the winner" Adina asked. "She tripped." "And the first runner-up?" Miss Michigan cracked her knuckles. "She tripped, too.

When the world moves forward too fast for some people, they try to pull us all back with their fear.

Evie wanted to cry. From fear. From exhaustion, yes. But mostly from the cruel uselessness, the damned stupid arbitrariness of it all.

Amen, sister, ... All apologies to Tom Cruise.

I stare at the pile of discarded remnants and think of my mother. Did she touch that pillar there? Does her scent still linger in a fragment of glass or a splinter of wood? A terrible emptiness settles into my chest. No matter how much I go about living, there are always small reminders that make the loss fresh again.

My personal motto is: WWWWD?: What Would Wonder Woman Do?

Who the heck is Don Quick-oats?

Come awake, Tom. Fathers can willfully hurt their children. They can be addicts too weak to give up their vices, no matter the pain it causes. Mothers can turn you invisible with neglect. They can erase you with a denial, a refusal to see. Friends can deceive you. People lie. It is a cold, hard world. I do not blame Nell Hawkins for retreating from it into a madness of her own choosing.