Quotes by Libba Bray

The land has a memory. Every stream and river runs with a confession of sorts, history whispered over rocks, lifted in the beaks of birds at a stream, carried out to the sea. Buffalo thunder across plains whose soil was watered with the blood of battles long since relegated to musty books on forgotten shelves. Fields once strewn with blue and gray now flower with uneasy buds. The slave master snaps the lash, and generations later, the ancestral scars remain.Under it all, the dead lie, remembering.

I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all.

Ive been poked and prodded in places Id always prided myself on keeping untouched for that one special doctor who gives me a ring and a promise someday.

Sometimes we seek that which we are not yet ready to find.

I know it. I know I shall make beastly mistakes, Father-The world does not forgive mistakes so quickly, my girl. He sounds bitter and sad.If the world will not forgive me, I say softly, I shall have to learn to forgive myself.He nods in understanding.And how will you marry? Or do you intend to marry?I think of Kartik, and tears threaten. I shall meet someone one day, as Mother found you.

Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.

Centuries of fighting, and for what? I say. Today it ends. I cant live in fear any longer. Ive cursed this power. Ive both enjoyed and misused it. And Ive hidden it away. Now I must try to wield it correctly, to marry it to a purpose and hope that is enough.

Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I dont know yet what power feels like. But this is surely what it looks like, and I think Im beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. Its not that they want to protect us; its that they fear us.

Because the pure girls get rescued. Mary Lou felt something she didnt let herself feel often. She was well and truly pissed off. Why do girls have to be all pure and innocent and good? Why dont guys have to be?

It had the word bitches in it, which is perfectly fine to use if youre a rapper or a director making a movie about career women, but not if youre a teen girl talking about her homies.Good point, Petra. We know that young ladies of the teen persuasion do not use these indelicate words. Nor do they have thoughts about sex, masturbation, violence, being competitive, or farting.

It was so hard to feel safe in the world when you were a girl.

What about you and me, Adina?” Duff said, sidling up to her by the railing. “I know I screwed up. But do you think we could start over?”Adina thought about everything that had happened. Part of her wanted to kiss Duff McAvoy, the tortured British trust-fund-runaway-turned-pirate-of-necessity who loved rock ‘n’ roll and mouthy-but-vulnerable bass-playing girls from New Hampshire. But he didn’t exist. Not really. He was a creature of TV and her imagination, a guy she’d invented as much as he’d invented himself. And this was what she suddenly understood about her mother: how with each man, each husband, she was really trying to fill in the sketchy parts of herself and become somebody she could finally love. It was hard to live in the messiness and easier to believe in the dream. And in that moment, Adina knew she was not her mother after all. She would make mistakes, but they wouldn’t be the same mistakes. Starting now.“Sorry,” she said, heading for the bow, where a spot of sun looked inviting. ”Oh, also, about that blog? Just so you know, my dads know a lot of gay lawyers. Bitches will take your ass down if you try to publish that. Peace out.

No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We’re all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they’d like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance.A fissure forms in the vessel. I’m cracking open.

Fate determines your caste. You must accept it and live according to the rules.You cant really believe that!I do believe it. That mans misfortune is that he cannot accept his caste, his fate.I know that the Indians wear their caste as a mark upon their foreheads for all to see. I know that in England, we have our own unacknowledged caste system. A laborer will never hold a seat in Parliament. Neither will a woman. I dont think Ive ever questioned such things until this moment. But what about will and desire? What if someone wants to change things.Kartik keeps his eyes on the room You cannot change your caste. You cannot go against fate. That means there is no hope of a better life. It is a trap.That is how you see it, he says softly.What do you mean?It can be a relief to follow the path that has been laid oud for you, to know your course and play your part in it.But how can you be sure that you are following the right course? What if there is no such thing as destiny, only choice? Then I do not choose to live without destiny, he says with a slight smile.

You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it.

Im sorry, Gemma. But we cant live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you.

Were each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion trying to emerge into something solid, something real. Weve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because theres an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.

Forgiveness. The frail beauty of the world takes root in me as I make my way back through the woods, past the caves and the ravine, where the earth has accepted the flesh of the deer, leaving nothing but a bone or two, peeking above Kartiks makeshift grave, to prove that any of this ever happened. Soon, theyll be gone too.But forgiveness...Ill hold on to that fragile slice of hope and keep it close remembering that in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret. cruelty and sacrifice. Were each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. Weve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because theres an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.

Im Sorry, he says. Its simple and direct, with none of the nonsense about God calling home an angel too young and who are we to question his mysterious ways.

What did I do to make Mommy leave?”“You didn’t do anything. This isn’t your fault.”“Then why?” she’d wailed.“I don’t know,” her daddy had said, and he looked so sad.“It isn’t fair!”“No, it isn’t, baby. Not by a mile. The world’s only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your own little cave, that’s one less fighter on the side of fair.