Quotes from Libba Bray

Isn't it enough that this world exists? That we can be everything here that we can't be when we are awake?" Wai-Mae asked. "No," Ling said. "I want to know how it works.

Oh, why should it bother her? But it did. It wasn't so much that Evie wanted Jericho as she wanted him to keep wanting her. It was utterly selfish, she knew. More about her vanity than anything else.

Mabel's parents had said that it was bigotry dressed up to look like science.

Regrets were like hauntings, Jericho knew, visitations people tried to dispel with busyness or the bottle, with blame heaped on others, or with a relentless urge to reframe and retell their own histories, to make up stories that haunted them less than the truth.

See, that's your generation all over—you muck up everything and then expect us to fix your messes

There is no progress without cost.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity,'" Memphis quoted. "W. B. Yeats. 'The Second Coming.

You're the elephant's eyebrows, doll.' He said.

and then he was running. Running hard like the settlers on the prairie racing to pound their stake into the hard, fertile ground of the heartland, securing their place and their children's places, the generations sprinting up under the blue sky.

I can't stay long. I told my mother I was attending an evening Mass with Henry and Evie at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Henry put a hand to his chest in faux shock. You used the Lord to lie to them? I'll just stand over here in case you're struck by lightning.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was a law designed to keep more Chinese from coming here once they'd finished building our railroads.' 'Doesn't sound terribly American.' 'On the contrary, it's very American.

It was Mabel Evie called when she got back. Mabel who came to her side, even though it was very early in the morning.

They will drink their tea. Weight their words. Wear hats against the sun. squeeze their minds into corsets, lest some errant thought should escape and ruin the smooth illusion they hold of themselves and the world as they like it.

being a good and reliable friend was pretty heroic when it came down to it.

How can anyone own the woods?" Evie grumbled. "Only the woods own the woods.

But more and more Memphis had begun to ask himself if there had ever been order, or if order was one more myth people repeated so they didn't have to think too much about the violence lurking just under the surface of every polite exchange, every façade of "civilization." And just whom did "order" serve?

But people rarely want the truth. We say that we want it when, really, we like being lied to. We prefer the ether of hope.

You know what works? Denial. As a coping tool, denial is severely underrated.

There is no greater power on this earth than story." Will paced the length of the room. "People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense—words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions—words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.

High above it all, the window washers hoist themselves up by the miracle of rope and hover in midair on small planks to clean away the grit of so many dreams discarded. They wipe their cloths until the lives on the other side of the window become clearer. Every now and then, faces appear at these windows. Eyes meet for a second, maybe two, the observed and the observer each surprised to find the other exists. Then they look quickly away, the connection unmade, islands once more.

I like the way Georgia looks, so different from Texas. All those tall pine trees and that rich, red dirt, like the ground bled and scabbed over, like it's got a history you can read in the very clay.

There's nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he's right.

I can sometimes influence a person inside a dream, Henry added. For instance, if someone were having a nightmare, I might say, 'Why don't you dream about clowns instead?' Clowns are your cure for a nightmare? Evie said from the couch, where she lay half-sprawled again, legs crossed, one leg kicking out and back. Never, ever say that to me inside one of my dreams, Henry. Promise me, She shivered. Clowns.

Memphis stared into the fire. "Why are we trying to save this country? What's it ever done for us?" In his mind, he could still see those words on that hateful sign. "Maybe we should just let it burn. Maybe we should let the King of Crows have it all." Bill let the question sit for a long time. "It's the only country we got, I reckon." "That's a bullshit answer," Memphis grumbled. "Only answer I got, too.