Top 500 Libba Bray Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “We are English, and I expect you to behave as such. No more crying.”

— Libba Bray

302. “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

303. “When did you become a cynic?” Sam asked. Evie smiled. “When I found out I was a little girl.”

— Libba Bray

304. “Make a better history.”

— Libba Bray

305. “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

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306. “I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.”

— Libba Bray

307. “We are nowhere, wanting to be somewhere, idling at the starting line of adulthood.”

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

309. “Why was there so much silence between men?”

— Libba Bray

310. “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

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

— Libba Bray

312. “You couldn’t be perfect enough to keep the world from betraying you.”

— Libba Bray

313. “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

314. “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?”

— Libba Bray

315. “They wish, too, that they could warn them about the gray man in the stovepipe hat, about the King of Crows. For not all ghosts remember, and the citizens have need of warning.”

— Libba Bray

316. “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

317. “There’s no such thing as hideously ordinary. If something is hideous, it’s automatically extraordinary. In a hideous way.”

— Libba Bray

318. “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

319. “It was a kiss small in its ministrations but epic in its feeling.”

— Libba Bray

320. “Reason was for suckers and Presbyterians.”

— Libba Bray

321. “It was not a curse to fully inhabit your body.”

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

323. “But this time she’d done everything right and they were leaving her anyway. You couldn’t be perfect enough to keep the world from betraying you.”

— Libba Bray

324. “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

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

— Libba Bray

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

— Libba Bray

327. “She wished she were as inconsequential as the ghosts in her dreams.”

— Libba Bray

328. “Felicity laughs and takes on the tone of a fashionable lady. “Darling, the Bryn-Joneses have just done the most marvelous thing in their parlor with human blood. We simply must have ours done straightaway!”

— Libba Bray

329. “When does belief become justification? When does right become rationale and crusade become crime?”

— Libba Bray

330. “She’s no beauty, mate.”

— Libba Bray

331. “There were few things worse than being ordinary, in Evie’s opinion. Ordinary was for suckers.”

— Libba Bray

332. “Why do girls always feel like they have to apologize for giving an opinion or taking up space in the world?”

— Libba Bray

333. “Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.”

— Libba Bray

334. “Sam grabbed one of Jericho’s Civil War soldier figurines and held it up to his mouth. “Oh, Jericho,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “Take me in your arms, you big he-man, you!”

— Libba Bray

335. “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.”

— Libba Bray

336. “Even Evie believed in something, that something being Evie a lot of the time.”

— Libba Bray

337. “Beauty, grace, and charm my foot. It’s a school for sadists with good tea-serving skills.”

— Libba Bray

338. “She would live every day fully. She was not the same girl she’d been nearly a year ago. She would never see things so blithely again. Even now, as Evie watched the parade and the people alight with pride and joy, she knew how easily that same crowd could become angry. The things that divided them. The things that brought them together, too. They couldn’t afford to become complacent.”

— Libba Bray

339. “Go on, darling,” she said, batting her lashes. “Tell them the rest.” “Riiiight,” Sam said, suppressing a smirk.”

— Libba Bray

340. “When you looked up to the sky and cried “Why?” sometimes the sky shrugged. Yet other times it answered with the warm assurance of linked hands. “Sorry,” it whispered on the wind. “Sorry for all the pain loneliness and disappointment. But there is this, too.”

— Libba Bray

341. “I told myself it was the snow – she couldn’t possibly get to Philadelphia on the roads. I told myself a hundred lies. Children do that. It’s amazing the sorts of things you’ll make yourself believe.”

— Libba Bray

342. “Mawah meenon ne le plus poohlala,” I say with an affected bow.”

— Libba Bray

343. “And when it comes, her kiss is like something not so much felt as found.”

— Libba Bray

344. “Alliteration. It’s when you repeat the same consonant in a phrase,” Memphis explained. “Huh. I was hoping it was something dirty.”

— Libba Bray

345. “All things are possible.”

— Libba Bray

346. “I have met the devil, and her name is Cecily Temple.”

— Libba Bray

347. “The citizens rise and wash, shave and brush. They don stockings and dresses, pants, shirts, and suspenders. They button up their need. Affix their aspirations. Tuck histories neatly inside drawers, creating themselves as they go, a rhapsody of reinvention.”

— Libba Bray

348. “It occurs to me that cricket is not the true sport in London – gossip is.”

— Libba Bray

349. “Ohmigosh. No food at all.” Tiara sank down on the sand as if the full weight of their predicament had finally hit her. She blinked back tears. And then that megawatt smile that belonged on cereal boxes across the nation reappeared. “I am going to be so superskinny by pageant time!”

— Libba Bray

350. “Warning: If you are insufferable, do not walk here. We shall eat you down to the marrow.”

— Libba Bray