Libba Bray Quotations | Page 2

Retribution is a dog chasing its tail.

Nobody Wants to be themselves. That's why there's tv. -Ephigenia,

No, I call. Come back. I'm here, he says. But I can't see. It's too bright. You can't hold back the light, Gemma. I'm here. Trust me.

Board the cows! We've come to enslave your marigolds.

They have money and position and Ann has none.It's amazing how often you can be right as long as you have those two things working in your favor.

Oh, hello," Dr. M says, shaking Balder's hand. "Wonderful costume. I'm a bit of a role player myself on the weekends. Tell me, where did you get the helmet?" It was forged in the North, blessed by the hands of Odin, given to me by my mother, Frigg," Balder answers. Lovely. I got mine on the Internet.

I've never been in love. I will die without knowing what it feels like to need to see one person's face when you go to sleep at night, to crave seeing it when you wake up. I wish I knew.

In a world beyond this one, that river goes on singing sweetly, enchanting us with what we want to hear, shaping what we need to see in order to keep going. In those waters, all disappointments are forgotten, our mistakes forgiven. Gazing into them, we see a strong father. A loving mother. Warm rooms where we are sheltered, adored, wanted. And the uncertainty of our futures is nothing more than the fog of breath on a windowpane.

Prepared to fly, even if she has to loose her legs to do it

Meraa mitra yahaan aaiye," he murmurs. I understand only a little Hindi, enough to know what he has said: Come here, my friend. I've never known a braver girl," he says.

It occurs to me that cricket is not the true sport in London - gossip is.

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.

In our travels, we have come across many equations--math for understanding the universe, for making music, for mapping stars, and also for tipping, which is important. Here is our favorite equation: Us plus Them equals All of Us. It is very simple math. Try it sometime. You probably won’t even need a pencil.

Live life as if today is your last day living. :-)

Sheep. I'm stuck in a boarding school filled with sheep.

Gemma~Was he really looking at me that way? Kartik~What way? Gemma~Like a piece of ripe fruit? Katrik~You'd best be on your guard with him.

I will tell you the story of how we found ourselves in a realm where dreams are formed, destiny is chosen, and magic is as real as a handprint in the snow.

The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World. I'm sixteen now, so you can imagine that's left me with quite a few days of major suckage.

I can be whatever. You can be whatever. We can be whatever. Whatever, together.

You're special. I'm special. The whole world's special, so don't you forget it. The universe wants us All to be happy, Full of smiles and all that stuff, All that stuff That's happy and smiley. So get happy, happy, happy right now! Get happy, happy, happy right now! Get happy, happy, happy right now!

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

How do people stay in love, anyway? Is it a choice? Or is it like those plants we studied in biology that mutate into something new and totally different but are still part of the same plant family?

The uncertainty of our future is nothing more than a fog of breath on a windowpane.

...because really, sometimes the irony gods just get drunk.

- So my own sister will not promote me? Speaking of which, weren't you supposed to find me a beautiful future wife with a small fortune? Have you had any success on that front? - Yes - I have warned them all.

I'd like to thank readers. Every time you open a book, it is a strike against ignorance. Unless you're reading Sarah Palin.

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

Dammit!" "What?" Gonzo sounds panicked. "We're out of gas." "You're Shithenging me." "I Shithenge you not.

Wow, you're awesome and The universe loves a winner, so the universe must really love you!

I don't know. Sometimes, I feel nothing, and I'm so afraid. Afraid I'll stop feeling anything at all. I'll just slip away inside myself...I just need to feel something" A Great and Terrible Beauty, Page 177, by

I'm floating inside my skin. I could go on floating like this for days. Right now, the real world with its heartbreak and disappointments is just a pulse against the protective membrane we've drunk ourselves into. It's somewhere outside us, waiting." A Great and Terrible Beauty, Page 141, by

The only thing I don't divulge is the truth about Mother killing little Carolina. I don't know why. Perhaps I sense he's not ready to know that just yet. Maybe he never will. People can live with only so much honesty. And sometimes, people can suprise you. I talk to my brother as I never have before, trusting in him, letting the river listen to my confessions on its path toward the sea. ~pg 693

I don't think you should die until you're ready. Until you've wrung out every last bit of living you can.

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

My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.

These are hard times. The world hurts. We live in fear and forget to walk with hope. But hope has not forgotten you. So ask it to dinner. It's probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation.

What frightens you? What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged? Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire? Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside?

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.

Why is it that some secrets can drown you while some pull you close to others in a way you never want to lose?

What happens if your choice is misguided, You must try to correct it But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t? Then you must find a way to live with it.

You are working up to Mr. Fantastic Fiction levels of Zombie Expert, which is like playing Guitar Hero on some level that actually melts the guitar controller, burning your fingers with searing hot plastic till you scream in pain. Only with words. And zombies.

How can my ankles and arms be obscene?

The key holds the truth

My cholera's acting up again.

I run after her, not really giving chase. I’m running because I can, because I must. Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop.

No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We’re all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they’d like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance. A fissure forms in the vessel. I’m cracking open.

Felicity and I watch the dancers moving as one. They spin about like the earth on it's axis, enduring the dark, waiting for the sun.

We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic.

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

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.

Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.

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.

Will you punish me forever?

The sun has blessed you," Sarita used to say. "Look how he has left his kisses on your face for all to see and be jealous." "The sun loves you more," I said, rubbing my hands over her dry arms, the color of an aged wine gourd, and she laughed. But this is not India and we are not prized for our freckles here. The sun is not allowed to show his love.

Thou shalt not steal. I seem to recall that being one of God’s I’d rather you didn’t lest I have to smite you into ash commandments.

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

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

You’ve been assigned an identity since birth. Then you spend the rest of your life walking around in it to see if it really fits. You try on all these different selves and abandon just as many. But really it’s about dismantling all that false armor, getting down to what’s real. -Going Bovine

In a world like this one, only the random makes sense.

How I'd love to get away from here and be someone else for a while in a place where no one knows or expects certain things from me.

When the music is over, she keeps her head down till she finds her seat again, and I wonder how many times each day she dies a little.

No? Part girl, part wolf? Do they lick their butter knives?

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.

I refuse to let the past find me here.

They don't know what they're in for at Spence, getting me, a ghost of a girl who'll nod and smile and take her tea but who isn't really here.

I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.

Don't you? if you keep them from the magic, they will never know what their lives could be.' They will remain protected,' Asha insists. No, 'I say. 'Only untested.

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.

He said to tell you to remember your heart in all things, that it is where your honor and your destiny will be found. Does it mean anything to you?' It is something he would say from time to time-that the eye could be misled, but that the heart was true.

It's so laughable that it's somewhere beyond comedy and right into tragedy again.

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.

Look, I know this seems a little half-assed...' 'No, dude. I'd be thrilled if this plan were half-assed. This is, like, no-assed.' 'You're right. It's the most no-assed thing I've ever done in my life.

You evah hear of a magic screw?' I cough back a laugh. 'No. No, sir.

The dull pain of truth weights my soul, pulling it under. I am left hopelessly awake.

There was something about the island that made the girls forget who they had been. All those rules and shalt nots. They were no longer waiting for some arbitrary grade. They were no longer performing. Waiting. Hoping. They were becoming. They were.

As one, they leap, laughing, and that is where we leave them - mouths open, arms spread wide, fingers splayed to take in the whole world, bodies flying high in defiance of gravity, as if they will never fall.

Perhaps this is how girls fall -- not in some crime of enchantment at the hands of a wicked ne'er-do-well, a grand before and after in which they are innocent victims who have no say in the matter. Perhaps they simply are kissed and want to kiss back. Perhaps they even kiss first. And why should they not?

Time has no meaning. I feel as if I have been left in the desert to die and am eagerly awaiting the vultures to begin their work and end my misery.

I have done what they expected of me. I have curtsied for my Queen and made my debut. This is what I have anticipated eagerly for years. So why do I feel so unsatisfied? Everyone is merry. They haven't a care in the world. And perhaps that is it. How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much.

Ahem. Dear Jesus," Taylor intoned more fervently. "We just want to thank you for gettin' us here safe ---" There was a loud, gurgling groan. Somebody shouted, "Oh my gosh! Miss Delaware just died!" "--- for gettin some of us here safe," Taylor continued. "And we pray that, as we are fine, upstandin', law-abidin' girls who represent the best of the best, you will protect us from harm and keep us safe until we are rescued and can tell our story to People magazine. Amen." - "Beauty Queens

Taylor clapped three times for attention. "Ladies! Ladies! My stars! That's enough. Now. We all know Miss Arkansas's girls are fake, Miss Ohio's easier than making cereal, and Miss Montana's dress is something my blind meemaw would wear to bingo night." - "Beauty Queens

- 'Music opens your soul, makes you ready.' - 'Ready for what?' - He smiles big. 'Exactly.

Ain't that a sight? With all the things we know and learn, we still ain't touched the big mysteries -- where we come from, where we go next, why we even her. And when something truly miraculous happens, we run and hide in our caves. We deny.

Travel opens your mind as few other things do.

Everything is randomly connected.

Without further warning, the sky opens up and cries.

There are no wrong decisions ― only different ones.

All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day.

I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living.

I've been poked and prodded in places I'd always prided myself on keeping untouched for that one special doctor who gives me a ring and a promise someday.

Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary.

Why should we girls not have the same privileges as men? Why do we police ourselves so stringently- whittling each other down with cutting remarks or holding ourselves back from greatness with a harness woven of fear and shame and longing? If we do not deem ourselves worthy first, how shall we ever ask for more?

Gemma, you see how it is. They've planned our entire lives, from what we shall wear to whom we shall marry and where we shall live. It's one lump of sugar in your tea whether you like it or not and you'd best smile even if you're dying deep inside. We're like pretty horses, and just as on horses, they mean to put blinders on us so we can't look left or right but only straight ahead where they would lead. Please, please, please, Gemma, let's not die inside before we have to.

We are English, and I expect you to behave as such. No more crying.

There’s a moment of profound sadness that can be dispelled only by summoning my anger.

Did they find something wanting in you, Gemma, at the party? You didn’t speak too freely or behave…strangely?” I grew claws and bayed at the moon. I confessed that I eat the hearts of small children. I told them I like the French.

Why does everyone want to own me?" Pippa mumbles. She's got her head in her hands. "Why do they all want to control my life -- how I look, whom I see, what I do or don't do? Why can't they just let me alone?" "Because you're beautiful," Ann answers, watching the fire lick her palm. "People always think they can own beautiful things.

Everyone seems to want more form me. I am a thoroughly disappointing girl around. I shall wear a scarlet 'D' upon my bosom for all to see so that they will know not to raise their expectations.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

What --- you don't believe in true love?" Petra asked. "The kind that can then be parlayed into awesome merchandising opportunities?" - "Beauty Queens