Top 500 Libba Bray Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “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

252. “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

253. “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

254. “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

255. “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

256. “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

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

— Libba Bray

258. “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

259. “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

260. “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

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

— 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. “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

266. “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.”

— Libba Bray

267. “Tonight, she went into the woods, and I fear she shall live in the woods of my soul for the rest of my days.”

— Libba Bray

268. “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

269. “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

270. “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

271. “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

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

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

275. “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

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

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

278. “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

279. “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

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

— Libba Bray

281. “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

282. “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

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

— Libba Bray

284. “Everything is randomly connected.”

— Libba Bray

285. “My cholera’s acting up again.”

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

287. “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

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

— Libba Bray

289. “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

290. “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

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

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

293. “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

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

— Libba Bray

295. “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

296. “Reason was for suckers and Presbyterians.”

— Libba Bray

297. “Make a better history.”

— Libba Bray

298. “They misspelled ‘party.’ How evil genius can they be?”

— Libba Bray

299. “I’ve learned that feminism is for everybody and there’s nothing wrong with taking up space in the world, even if you have to fight for it a little bit, and that if you don’t feel like smiling or waving, that’s okay. You don’t have to, and you don’t have to say sorry. Mostly, I’ve learned that I don’t really care if you like these answers or not, because they’re the best, most honest ones I’ve got, and I just don’t feel like I can cheat myself enough to give you what you want me to say.”

— Libba Bray

300. “What kind of person doesn’t let you have gummi bears?”

— Libba Bray