Quotes from Libba Bray

Can I tell you a secret? I don't like ghosts very much. They are terrible people.

Every leader has blood on her hands.

Miss Teen Dreamers. It is time to get ahold of ourselves. Miss Alabama, I did not mean that literally. That is gross. Stop it." Taylor

All, right then. Henry raised his hand like a sorcerer. Oh, Ling Chan, Madame Curie of the dream world, he intoned dramatically, barely keeping a straight face. Sleep hath released thee! Now is the time thou must waketh! Ling rolled her eyes. You're an idiot.

Miss McCleethy stands to address us. Thank you, Miss Bradshaw. That was a nice start to our day. A nice start? It was lovely. Perfect, in fact. Miss McCleethy has no passion at all, I decide. I shall be forced to give her two bad conduct marks in my invisible ledger.

Now is the only thing you can count on, Sam. It's all we really get, she said quietly, and felt that it was the truest thing she'd ever said.

This brings a fresh wave of tears. To my great surprise, Kartik wipes them away with his hand. Meraa mitra yahaan aaiye, he murmurs. I understand only a little Hindi, enough to know what he as said: Come here, my friend . I've never known a braver girl, he says.

Miss Ohio flailed with excitement. Makeovers are so fun! It's like the Superman phone booth of girl. Adina sat up. It's denigrating and objectifying. No. It's eye shadow and lipstick and sex and mystery and magic and transformation and fun. And nobody's taking that away from me.

she was sure that all those things she'd been taught abut feeling shame were wrong. It was not a curse to fully inhabit your body. You were only as cursed as you allowed yourself to be.

When does belief become justification? When does right become rationale and crusade become crime?

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.

Well, I mean, all the best people have a little beast in them.

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.

That was the trouble with letting people in—once you'd taken off the armor, it was hard to put it back on.

I think being friends with you will be challenging, he said at last. 'Will be challenging'? Henry shrugged. I guess you're stuck with me now, Miss Chan. I apologize in advance.

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

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

Ling's smile was big and goofy. Henry whistled. That smile of yours is a real beauty. Ling shook her head, letting her hair cover her face. It's stupid. Right. What I meant to say is, that stupid smile of yours is a real beauty. This time, Ling actually giggled. The creature laughs! Henry said. I'm not such a killjoy! Actually, you are. A bit. Hey!

Isn't it enough that this world exists?... Wai-Mae asked. No, Ling said. I want to know how it works. I just want to be happy, Wai-Mae said.

She's a bit...odd. You mean crazy, Ling said. I'd say eccentric. That's a nice way of saying crazy.

And afterward, in the small cabin, they'd do this, this tangle of bodies, this blurring of the edges that kept people distant and lonely.

They would have been mystics and healers, women who worked with herbs and delivered babies. But it would have made them suspect. Women who have power are always feared," she says sadly.

Haven't you been hurt?" Miss Lillian asked. Theta thought of Roy's fists. Mrs. Bowers's cold cruelty. Even the first wound of abandonment. "Yes." "And here you still are. No. The question is this: Haven't you been hurt enough?

Besides, I'm in the theater, darlin'. I meet an awful lot of strange people. It's an occupational hazard.