"The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side."
— Scott Westerfeld

"People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"You can never really know someone completely. That’s why it’s the most terrifying thing in the world, really—taking someone on faith, hoping they’ll take you on faith too. It’s such a precarious balance, It’s a wonder we do it at all. And yet..

"
— Libba Bray

"There are no safe choices. Only other choices. There are no safe choices

"
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be."
— Libba Bray

"I'm running because I can, because I must.
Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop."
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"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.
--Libba Bray"
— Libba Bray

"...reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all. "
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"(page 327) Sometimes we seek that which we are not yet ready to find."
— Libba Bray (Rebel Angels)

"There are no safe choices. Only different ones."
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended with vigilance, else it dies out. "
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"...I should never be left alone with my mind for too long."
— Libba Bray

"He's like a drug for you, Bella." His voice was still gentle, not at all critical. "I see that you can't live without him now. It's too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun."
The corner of my mouth turned up in a wistful half-smile. "I used to think of you that way, you know. Like the sun. My personal sun. You balanced out the clouds nicely for me."
He sighed. "The clouds I can handle. But I can't fight with an eclipse."
— Stephenie Meyer

""If there's a thing I've learned in my life it's to not be afraid of the responsibility that comes with caring for other people. What we do for love: those things endure. Even if the people you do them for don't""
— Cassandra Clare

"He'd felt like a jack-o-lantern for the past few days, as if his guts had been yanked out with a fork and dumped in a heap while a grinning smile stayed plastered on his face."
— Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes)

"Where there is love, there is often also hate. They can exist side by side."
— Cassandra Clare (City of Bones)

""In the end that was the choice you made, and it doesn't matter how hard it was to make it. It matters that you did." "
— Cassandra Clare (City of Glass)

"You don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope."
— Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games)

"What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful."
— Scott Westerfeld

"Nature didn't need an operation to be beautiful. It just was."
— Scott Westerfeld (The Uglies Trilogy)

"Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart."
— Scott Westerfeld (So Yesterday)

"Sometimes the facts in my head get bored and decide to take a walk in my mouth. Frequently this is a bad thing."
— Scott Westerfeld (So Yesterday)

"Their reasons don't mean anything unless I have a choice."
— Scott Westerfeld

"It's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing."
— Scott Westerfeld (Peeps)

"I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth. "
— Scott Westerfeld

"Stupid dreams. Even the good ones are bad, because they remind you how poorly reality measures up."
— Neal Shusterman (Unwind)

"You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"...One thing you learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light."
— Neal Shusterman (Unwind)

"Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villians."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

""And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.""
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds."
— Libba Bray

"Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right."
— Libba Bray

"And for a moment, I understand that I have friends on this lonely path; that sometimes your place is not something you find, but something you have when you need it."
— Libba Bray (Rebel Angels)

"But forgiveness... I'll 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. We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. "
— Libba Bray

"We create the illusions we need to go on."
— Libba Bray

"What happens if your choice is misguided,
You must try to correct it
But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?
Then you must find a way to live with it."
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"I can't make a sound. I only nod. I've heard it said that God is in the details. It's the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it. "
— Libba Bray

"And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"It is a giggle full of high spirits and merry mischief, proof that we never lose our girlish selves, no matter what sort of women we become."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

""People aren't always what you want them to be""
— Libba Bray

"It is funny how you do not miss affection until it is given, but once it is, it can never be enough; you would drown in it if possible."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating."
— Libba Bray

"If you've a story, make sure it's a whole one, with details close to hand. It's the difference between a good lie and getting caught."
— Tamora Pierce (Trickster's Choice)

"She would have kissed him, if she kissed stupid men."
— Tamora Pierce (Trickster's Queen)

"Remember, we're madly in love, so it's all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it."
— Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games)

"I'm coming back into focus when Caesar asks him if he has a girlfriend back home. Peeta hesitates, then gives an unconvincing shake of his head.

"Handsome lad like you. There must be some special girl. Come on, what’s her name?" says Caesar.

Peeta sighs. "Well, there is this one girl. I’ve had a crush on her ever since I can remember. But I’m pretty sure she didn’t know I was alive until the reaping."

Sounds of sympathy from the crowd. Unrequited love they can relate to.

"She have another fellow?" asks Caesar.

"I don’t know, but a lot of boys like her," says Peeta.

"So, here’s what you do. You win, you go home. She can’t turn you down then, eh?" says Caesar encouraging-ly.

"I don’t think it’s going to work out. Winning...won’t help in my case," says Peeta.

"Why ever not?" says Caesar, mystified.

Peeta blushes beet red and stammers out. "Because...because...she came here with me."
— Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games)

"Destroying things is much easier than making them."
— Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games)

"Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there."
— Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games)

"So? He was stupid. If I killed everyone who was stupid, I wouldn't have time to sleep."
— Tamora Pierce (In the Hand of the Goddess)