Quotes from Libba Bray

It reminds us that even in the midst of chaos and terror, there is the capacity for change.

No. I like my girls fully conscious when I kiss 'em. I'm funny that way

If you did the wrong things for the right reasons, did that make the wrong things right? Or did that just mean you had turned your back on finding a more right way? And once you justified violence, did that make it easier the next time and the next, until you'd become the villain of your own story?

Isaiah thought of Memphis in love with Theta and Theta in love with Memphis, and he understood for the first time just how dangerous their love was for them. Even though they were supposed to be free, they weren't.

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.

She was only herself. Her one weapon was her fierce belief that ordinary people could come together and make a better world.

if there's anything I'm starting to learn about people it's (a) that they are fundamentally suspicious and afraid of anyone who is "different," and (b) that fear makes them do and say asinine things.

The river is change, and change cannot be stopped. Change, it sings. Change or be lost.

they talked, too, of their futures, as if they could shape the glittering course of their destinies with secret confessions offered like prayers to the room's benevolent hush.

What fresh hell is this?" Adina muttered.

Before the devil breaks you, first he will make you love him.

Any good world would allow for us to have free will, yes?" he continued. "Can we agree to this point? But once human beings have free will, they also have the ability to make choices—and commit evil. Thus, this very good thing, free will, allows the possibility of evil into our fine world.

Their jaws unhinged and they vomited out an oily black substance, which fell to the floor like a river of snakes.

There is no greater power on this earth than story. The Diviners by Libba Bray page 407 paragraph 4 sentence 1

The light is so bright it hurts my eyes. But I don't dare close them. I won't. Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, because it is morning; it is morning, and there is so much to see.

It has carried shouts of love, and it has dried tears to salt tracks on more faces than it can number.

The most important quality in a friend is to be yourself. Unless you're not a very nice person. Then you should try to be somebody else.

Sometimes, sickness came on like the flood itself, with no way to hold it back. But other times, sickness came about because of the carelessness and unfairness of the world.

There was nothing but the night and the fire and the ancient, lasting story of good versus evil, of life and death hanging in the balance. It was a thread woven through all of humankind: this need for story to explain the unexplainable, to comfort the hurting, to promise that no one was alone.

In the firelight, Mother's elegant handwriting dances on the page.

just don't know how we make this work between us," Alma said quietly. Ling blushed with shame. Sex. It was about sex, or the lack thereof. From the corner of her eye, she watched as Alma laced her beautiful fingers and placed them in her lap. And then Ling forced herself to keep her gaze on the man across the street sweeping his patch of sidewalk. Ling watched the bristles pushing against the wilted flowers and felt as if she, too, were being brushed into the gutter.

There is no greater power on this earth than story. People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense - words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions - words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.

That was the trouble with wanting somebody else to take on making decisions—sometimes they did, and you ended up going to Nebraska.

We're all damaged, somehow.