Bray Quotes & Sayings

Without further warning, the sky opens up and cries. — Libba Bray

Okay. That's fair. Abso-tive-ly fair. Let's say the tables were turned. If I were about to walk off a cliff, what would you do?"
Evie pursed her lips. "Push?"
"I don't believe that."
"You would on the way down. — Libba Bray

Will you punish me forever? — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

If a donkey bray at you, don't bray at him. — George Herbert

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

Every city is a ghost.
New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park. — Libba Bray

Goodbye, I whisper at last, when it no longer matters and there is no one to hear it but the window. — Libba Bray

Because really, sometimes the irony gods just get drunk. — Libba Bray

She has a scent that is familiar and comforting, like all the things you wish you could take with you on your travels to make you feel less alone. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Enterprise Systems, I mean. And not just a little bit, either. Orders of magnitude wrong. Billions and billions of dollars worth of wrong. Hang-our-heads-in-shame wrong. It's time to stop the madness. — Tim Bray

I think sometimes in literature we kind of police ourselves. I know a lot of people talked about Twilight, and they would say, oh, but the heroine, she lets this man make her decisions. And I thought, that may not be the particular fantasy or trope that works for me.
But listen man, I read Wuthering Heights. I wanted me a little Heathcliff action. I mean, why can't we indulge that fantasy and also be like, And now I would like the ERA passed, please. Also, this lipstick is fuckin' killer. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

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

Write like it matters, and it will. — Libba Bray

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

Sam. Don't make me kill you on a full stomach. I might get a cramp. — Libba Bray

I'm tired of everyone deciding what's for my own good! — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

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

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

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

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

You look very handsome, Papa," I say.
The twinkle is back in his eyes. "Smoke and mirrors," he says with a wink. "Smoke and mirrors. — Libba Bray

How can my ankles and arms be obscene? — Libba Bray

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

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. — Libba Bray

Evie narrowed her eyes. "A time limit. Four weeks of the swooniest, swellest romance New York City has ever seen. And then, kaput. Over and out. Off the air."
"Golly, when you say it like that, it sounds as if our love's not real, Lamb Chop. — Libba Bray

I am no longer content to be the scared, obedient schoolgirl. Who are you, a stranger, to tell me what I can and cannot do? — Libba Bray

We're all damaged somehow.-A Great and Terrible Beauty — Libba Bray

There are no safe choices. Only other choices. — Libba Bray

Women who have power are always feared. — Libba Bray

Jail,' the big cop said in his stuffy, liquid voice. 'Where anything you bray will be abused against you in a sort of caw. — Stephen King

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.
— Libba Bray

I'll try to communicate, Taylor said. She spoke slowly and deliberately. Hello! We need help. Is your village close?
My village is Denver. And I think it's a long way from here. I'm Nicole Ade. Miss Colorado.
We have a Colorado where we're from too! Tiara said. She swiveled her hips, spread her arms wide, then brought her hands together prayer-style and bowed. Kipa aloha.
Nicole stared. I speak English. I'm American. Also, did you learn those moves from Barbie's Hawaiian Vacation DVD?
Ohmigosh, yes! Do your people have that, too? — Libba Bray

Things aren't good or bad in and of themselves. It's what we do with them that makes them so. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

What if I choose the dream instead? — Libba Bray

I am starting a collection of only right-hand gloves. It's ever so bourgeois to have two. — Libba Bray

And please, stay away from those books you devour. They are putting the most fantastical tales into your head. — Libba Bray

Jericho didn't seem to know life beyond the pages of a musty old book, and he didn't seem interested in knowing anything beyond that, either. — Libba Bray

She's right. I don't trust her farther than I can run full-steam in a corset, but she's right. The truth is hard and unfair, but there it is. — Libba Bray

I invited myself. Thought this table needed some class. — Libba Bray

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

With a low bow, she is gone in a haze of roses and hope — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion revisions, large and small, that go into the writing of a book. — Libba Bray

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

The ground's soft with pine needles and the occasional crunch of a cone. The air smells like it's just been born. — Libba Bray

Centuries of fighting, and for what? I say. Today it ends. I can't live in fear any longer. I've cursed this power. I've both enjoyed and misused it. And I've hidden it away. Now I must try to wield it correctly, to marry it to a purpose and hope that is enough. — Libba Bray

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

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

Agent Jones held Sinjin's face in his hands. "I'm going to make balloon animals. People need balloon animals."
"How right you are, strange delusional man," Sinjin said. — Libba Bray

I never minded the random scribblings of other readers, found them interesting in fact. It is a truth universally acknowledged that people write the darndest things in the margins of their books. — Tara Bray Smith

Sometimes when Sam's pretending to be in love with me, my stomach does funny things."
"Well, get some milk of magnesia and stop it. — Libba Bray

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

And afterward, in the small cabin, they'd do this, this tangle of bodies, this blurring of the edges that kept people distant and lonely. — Libba Bray

From the elevator, Mabel watched the old woman's bare feet hobbling away, a trail of salt and the lace hem of her nightgown left in her wake like sea foam. — Libba Bray

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? — Libba Bray

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

I will build my empire next to the sea, so I can laugh from my throne as my enemies drown. — Bray Wyatt

Duff's little moans traveled up her spine, made her head buzz. And another thought grabbed hold: She was doing this. She had the power to do this. THat she could be both completely vulnerable and totally in control was mind-blowing. — Libba Bray

Long shadows of evening creep up the walls, inching closer. Gradually, they reach fully across us, holding us in the stillness that only night can bring. In the hazy gloom of dusk, we are silhouettes of ourselves, reduced to our very essence. The night grows bolder. Unafraid, it opens its mouth and swallows us whole. — Libba Bray

DID is about survival! As more people begin to appreciate this concept, individuals with DID will start to feel less as though they have to hide in shame. DID develops as a response to extreme trauma that occurs at an early age and usually over an extended period of time. — Deborah Bray Haddock

The desperation meeting the silence with its unmasked wish. — Libba Bray

Miss McCleethy stands to address us. "Thank you, Miss Bradshaw. That was a nice start to our day."
A nice start? It was lovely. Perfect, in fact. Miss McCleethy has no passion at all, I decide. I shall be forced to give her two bad conduct marks in my invisible ledger. — Libba Bray

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

Because you can't keep up the illusion forever," I say. "No one has that much magic. — Libba Bray

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

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. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

He's jealous! Kartik is jealous and Simon finds me ... delicious? I am a bit giddy. And confused. But no, mostly giddy, I find. — Libba Bray

Will looked at Evie funny. "Advertising?"
"Yes. You've heard of it, haven't you? Swell modern invention. It lets people know about something they need. Soap, lipstick, radios - or your museum, for instance. We could start with a catchy slogan, like, 'The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult - we've got the spirit! — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

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? — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth."
"If I were the last man on earth it'd be because you drove the other poor suckers to early graves. — Libba Bray

I thought I was having an existential crisis, but it was nothing.
Please don't tailgate: body in trunk. — Libba Bray

When is the last time government admitted it might have made a mistake and canceled a program? — Thomas Bray

It's just too bad they have to die. They're totally bangable, you know?" "Bangable," Taylor mouthed in disgust. She wanted to show this boy another meaning for the word bang, and it involved his head against a steel door. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all? — Libba Bray

Sam had a skill that often let him take what he needed. But you couldn't do that with love. It had to be given. Shared. — Libba Bray

I don't care. If I like somebody, I like her, and that's that." He thumped his chest and made a scowly face. "Let 'em come for me. I will stare down the mob with their pitchforks! I will make a speech about tolerance and love. I will tell them the folly of their ways! And then I will grab your hand and run like hell because, Jesus, a mob with pitchforks? — Libba Bray

But if we are to remain a great empire, we must have a greater understanding of the hearts and minds of others. — Libba Bray

But without that spark of anger, without destruction, there can be no rebirth. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

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

The world's most bada** Viking yard gnome is on the counter by the cash register using a dinner plates as a shield and a steak knife as a sword — Libba Bray

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

For heavens sake, if you haven't gotten comfy with Agile techniques and thinking, get on it right now. — Tim Bray

Marlowe grinned. That so? I couldn't disagree more. Is that Nietzsche talking? Ah, the Germans. We have a factory in Germany, you know. Actually, Germany is a fine example, so let's take Germany: They were crushed in the Great War. Their debt was staggering. A pound of bread cost nearly three billion Marks! The Reichsmark was practically worthless - you'd have better luck papering your house with it than trying to buy goods or pay your bills. But Marlowe Industries is going to help them get on their feet. We're going to change the world. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Discord need not be an impediment. Differences can bring strength. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Why does it always seem that I have only the shadow of my father? I'm like a child constantly grabbing at his coattails and missing. — Libba Bray