Libba Bray Quotes - Page 2

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

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.

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

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.

I'm like everyone else in this stupid, bloody, amazing world. I'm flawed. Impossibly so. But hopeful. I'm still me.

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice... No one can live in the light all the time.

Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended to with vigilance, else it dies out.

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.

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

So, now I've been to see a drug counselor who told me I need to lay off the drugs and talk about my feelings, and a shrink who heard what I had to say and immediately put me on drugs.

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.

Who the heck is Don Quick-oats?

Everyone's dying. A little, every day. Make it count.

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.

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

To each his own magic.

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.

Beneath the skin, there is fear. Pain. Remorse. Yearning. Desire. A fierce longing for power. All of this. We are joined. It is as if we live in the center of a great storm. Around us the world of the realms revolves like a giant kaleidoscope, images refracted again and again. So many worlds! So much to know.

We create the illusions we need to go on. And one day, when they no longer dazzle or comfort, we tear them down, brick by glittering brick, until we are left with nothing but the bright light of honesty. The light is liberating. Necessary. Terrifying. We stand naked and emptied before it. And when it is too much for our eyes to take, we build a new illusion to shield us from its relentless truth.

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

But sons are a different matter to a man. More a duty than an indulgence.

Our mouths and bodies speak for us in a new language as the trees shake loose a rain of petals that stick to our slickness like skins we will wear forever. And just like that, I am changed.

Travel opens your mind as few other things do. It is its own form of hypnotism, and I am forever under its spell

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

I've heard it said that God is in the details. It's the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it.