Top 500 Libba Bray Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “A place to keep all your secrets.”

— Libba Bray

252. “He loved her very much. She inspired his work. He used to say, ‘There is no meaning but what we assign to life, and she is my meaning.”

— Libba Bray

253. “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.”

— Libba Bray

254. “If I have to look through one more of these, I’m throwing myself off that balcony,” he moaned. “Let me know if you need help,” Jericho said.”

— Libba Bray

255. “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

256. “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.”

— Libba Bray

257. “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.”

— Libba Bray

258. “Nobody’s killing any cats.” Miss Lillian glowered. “It’s what we’ve always done.” “Yeah, well, I’m changing how things are done.” Miss Lillian started to protest, but Miss Addie cut her off. “Very well. We could stand to change.”

— Libba Bray

259. “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

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

— Libba Bray

261. “There’s a lot of foot stomping, clapping, and cheering. I just want to win some cash and find my yard gnome. It’s not a lot to ask.”

— Libba Bray

262. “Women who have power are always feared.”

— Libba Bray

263. “That’s what he always did, tell a joke or find someone else when things began to feel like something genuine. Well, he was tired of feeling haunted – by Louis, by his father’s disappointment, and his mother’s illness. He’d let himself fill up with ghosts of shame until there was no room for love. No more. No more.”

— Libba Bray

264. “It seemed odd to Sosie that she had to make some hard-and-fast decision about such an arbitrary, individual thing as attraction, like having to declare an orientation major: I am straight with a minor in gay.”

— Libba Bray

265. “It’s possible to pretend I’m someone other than who I am, and if I pretend long enough, I can believe it.”

— Libba Bray

266. “Corrupt my brother, will you? I’ll see you in hell first, sir.”

— Libba Bray

267. “We are the dead. We are the keepers of the stories. We hold the history of blood and promises. We are speaking. Are you listening? Will you hear?”

— Libba Bray

268. “There is no meaning but what we assign. We create our own reality. I can live with that.”

— Libba Bray

269. “How can my ankles and arms be obscene?”

— Libba Bray

270. “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.”

— Libba Bray

271. “All the times I say, ‘Don’t see me’? With you, I wish I had an opposite power: See me. See me, Evie. See all of me. There’s a fella who loves you right here. I’m not perfect. I’m a handful. But you know what? So are you. There. Not sugarcoating it.”

— Libba Bray

272. “Because I’m not enough, she thought. That was the terrible echo shouting up at her: Fraud, fraud, fraud. She got drunk and talked too much and danced on tables. She had a temper and a sharp tongue, and she often blurted out things she instantly regretted. Worst of all, she suspected that was who she truly was – not so much a bright young thing as a messy young thing.”

— Libba Bray

273. “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

274. “No? Part girl, part wolf? Do they lick their butter knives?”

— Libba Bray

275. “Sorry for all the pain and loneliness and disappointment. But there is this, too.”

— Libba Bray

276. “I am starting a collection of only right-hand gloves. It’s ever so bourgeois to have two.”

— Libba Bray

277. “I think about dying every day, because I can’t stop thinking about living.”

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

279. “You’ve influenced the world not because you wanted to hug it and cuddle it and call it sweet thing, but because one day you wanted to beat the crap out of somebody but you didn’t. You made a painting instead.”

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

281. “Ain’t that the way of the world, now? Good luck turns bad. Bad luck turns good. Just a big rolling craps game played between this world and the next, and we the dice getting tossed around.”

— Libba Bray

282. “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

283. “Jericho lay back down on his side, watching her breathe just an arm’s length from him. She was not beautiful while she slept; her mouth hung open and she snored very lightly, and this, despite everything that had happened, made him smile.”

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

285. “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.”

— Libba Bray

286. “My cholera’s acting up again.”

— Libba Bray

287. “With a low bow, she is gone in a haze of roses and hope.”

— Libba Bray

288. “Everything is randomly connected.”

— Libba Bray

289. “Maybe that’s what real friendship is – getting so used to people that you need to be annoyed by them.”

— Libba Bray

290. “Evie yanked him to safety by the edge of his shirt, ripping it. “Thanks. You owe me a shirt,” Sam said. “You owe me twenty dollars.”

— Libba Bray

291. “Discord need not be an impediment. Differences can bring strength.”

— Libba Bray

292. “My head kinda hurts,” Miss New Mexico said. Several of the girls gasped. Half of an airline serving tray was lodged in her forehead, forming a small blue canopy over her eyes. “What is it?” Miss New Mexico checked to make sure her bra straps weren’t showing. “N-nothing.” Miss Ohio managed an awkward smile.”

— Libba Bray

293. “Fashionable debutantes in pastel chiffon party dresses wilt into leather club chairs like frosted petit fours melting under the July sun.”

— Libba Bray

294. “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.”

— Libba Bray

295. “It was funny how one afternoon with a best friend could set a girl right.”

— Libba Bray

296. “There is no greater power on this earth than story. People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense – words do.”

— Libba Bray

297. “The dark does not weep for itself because there is no light. Rather, it accepts that it is the dark. It is said that even the gods must die.” He winks. “But not without one hell of a fight.”

— Libba Bray

298. “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

299. “Henry looked from Ling to Alma and back again. His mouth slid into a sly smile. “Oh my.”

— Libba Bray

300. “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?”

— Libba Bray