"...for good stories, it seems, never loose their magic."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

" "What frightens you?
What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged?
Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire?
Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside?""
— Libba Bray

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

" 'War.' Gorgon spits the word. 'That is what they call it to give the illusion of honor and law. It is chaos. Madness and blood and the hunger to win. It has alwys been thus and shall always be so.' "
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

" 'Give yourself to me, Gemma, and you will never be alone again. You'll be worshiped. Adored. Loved. But you must give yourself to me- a willing sacrifice.'
Tears slip down my face. 'Yes,' I murmur.
'Gemma, don't listen,' Circe says hoarsely, and for a moment, I don't see Eugenia; I see only the tree, the blood pumping beneath its pale skin, the bodies of the dead hanging from it like chimes.
I gasp, and Eugenia is before me again. 'Yes, this is what you want, Gemma. Try as you might, you cannot kill this part of yourself. The solitude of the self taht waits just under the stairs of your soul. Always there, no matter how much you've tried to get rid of it. I understand. I do. Stay with me and never be lonely again.'
'Don't listen... to that... bitch,' Circe croaks, and the vines tighten around her neck.
'No, you're wrong,' I say to Eugenia as if coming out of a long sleep. 'You couldn't kill this part of yourself. And you couldn't accept it, either.'
'I'm sure I don't know what you mean.' she says, sounding uncertain for the first time.
'That's why they were able to take you. They found your fear.'
'And what, pray, was it?'
'Your pride. You couldn't believe you might have some of the same qualities as the creatures themselves.'
'I am not like them. I am their hope. I sustain them.'
'No. You tell yourself that. That's why CIrce told me to search my dark corners. So I wouldn't be caught off guard.'
Circe laughts, a splintered cackle that finds a way under my skin.
'And what about you, Gemma?' Eugenia purrs. 'Have you "searched" yourself, as you say?'
'I've done things I'm not proud of. I've made mistakes,' I say, my voice growing stronger, my fingers feeling for the dagger again. 'But I've done good, too.'
'And yet, you're alone. All that trying and still you stand apart, watching from the other side of the grass. Afraid to have what you truly want because what if it's not enough after all? What if you get it and you still feel alone and apart? So much better to wrap yourself in the longing. The yearning. The restlessness. Poor Gemma. She doesn't quite fit, does she? Poor Gemma- all alone.
It's as if she's delivered a blow to my heart. My hand falters. 'I-I...'
'Gemma, you're not alone,' Circe gasps, and my hand touches metal.
'No. I'm not. I'm like everyone else in this stupid, bloody, amazing world. I'm flawed. Impossibly so. But hopeful. I'm still me.' I've got it now. Sure and strong in my grip. 'I see through you. I see the truth.'"
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

" 'Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villians... And magic itself is neither good nor bad; it is intent that makes it either.'"
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"It's so laughable that it's somewhere beyond comedy and right into tragedy again."
— Libba Bray

" 'I know you adore Father, but he isn't the white knight you imagine him to be. He never was. True, he's charming and loving in his way. But he's selfish. e's a limited man determined to bring about his own end-'
'But-'
Tom grabs both my hands in his and gives them a small squeeze. 'Gemma, you can't save him. Why can't you accept that?'
I see my reflection on the surface of the Thames. My face is a watery outline, all blurred edges with nothing settled.
'Because if I let go of that'- I swallow hard, once, twice- 'then I have to accept that I am alone.'
The ship's horn howls again as it slips out toward sea. Tom's reflection appears beside mine, just as uncertain.
'We're every one of us alone in this world, Gemma.' He doesn't say it bitterly. 'But you have company, if you want.'"
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"All morning, Spence has been a well-oiled machine of activity. Everyone doing her bit, quietly and efficiently. It's strange how deliberate people are after a death. All the indecision suddenly vanishes into clear, defined moments--changing the linens, choosing a dress or a hymn, the washing up, the muttering of prayers. All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day."
— Libba Bray

" 'He said to tell you to remember your heart in all things, that it is where your honor and your destiny will be found. Does it mean anything to you?'
'It is something he would say from time to time-that the eye could be misled, but that the heart was true.'"
— 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)

" Kartik places a sovereign in the lady's cup, and I know that it's likely all he has.
'Why did you do that?' I ask.
He kicks a rock on the ground, balancing it nimbly between his feet like a ball. 'She needed it.'
Father says it isn't good to give money to beggers. They'll only spend it unwisely on drink or other pleasures. 'She might buy ale with it.'
He shrugs. 'Then she'll have ale. It isn't the pound that matters; it's the hope... I know what it's like to fight for things that others take for granted.' "
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"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)

"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. We’ve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time."
— Libba Bray

"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

"To those who will see, the world waits."
— Libba Bray

"Shall I tell you a story? A new and terrible one? A ghost story? Are you ready? Shall I begin? Once upon a time there were four girls. One was pretty. One was clever. One charming, and one...one was mysterious. But they were all damaged, you see. Something not right about the lot of them. Bad blood. Big dreams. Oh, I left that part out. Sorry, that should have come before. They were all dreamers, these girls. One by one, night after night, the girls came together. And they sinned. Do you know what that sin was? No one? Pippa? Ann? Their sin was that they believed. Believed they could be different. Special. They believed they could change what they were--damaged, unloved. Cast-off things. They would be alive, adored, needed. Necessary. But it wasn't true. This is a ghost story remember? A tragedy. They were misled. Betrayed by their own stupid hopes. Things couldn't be different for them, because they weren't special after all. So life took them, led them, and they went along, you see? They faded before their own eyes, till they were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. With what can't be. There, now. Isn't that the scariest story you've ever heard?"
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"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

"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)

"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

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

"We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"Eve didn't choose to eat the apple. She was tempted by the serpent."
"Yes," I argue, thoughts coming out half-formed. "But...she didn't have to take a bite. She chose to."
— Libba Bray

"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

"Do you think they missed him terribly when he fell? Did God cry over his lost angel, I wonder?"
— Libba Bray (Rebel Angels)

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

"There is much asked and only so much I think I can or should answer, and so, in this post I would like to give a few thoughts on what seemed to be the overwhelming question: “WHY?”
And here is the best answer I can give: Because.

Because sometimes, life is damned unfair.

Because sometimes, we lose people we love and it hurts deeply.

Because sometimes, as the writer, you have to put your characters in harm’s way and be willing to go there if it is the right thing for your book, even if it grieves you to do it.

Because sometimes there aren’t really answers to our questions except for what we discover, the meaning we assign them over time.

Because acceptance is yet another of life’s “here’s a side of hurt” lessons and it is never truly acceptance unless it has cost us something to arrive there.

Why, you ask? Because, I answer.

Inadequate yet true."
— Libba Bray

"The trouble with morning is that it comes well before noon."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"Heaven's brightest and best-loved angel, who was cast out for inspiring a rebellion against God. Having lost Heaven, Lucifer and his rebel angels vowed to continue fighting here on earth."
"I don't understand why he had to fight. He was already in heaven."
"True. But he wasn't content to serve. He wanted more."
"He had all he could ask for, didn't he?" Ann asks.
"Exactly." Miss Moore states. "He had to ask. He was dependent upon someone else's whim. It's a terrible thing to have no power of one's own. To be denied."
— Libba Bray (Rebel Angels)

"In books, the truth makes everything good and fine. The good prevail. The wicked are punished. There is happiness. But it's not like that really, is it?"
"No," I say. "I suppose it only makes everything known.
"
— Libba Bray (Rebel Angels)

"That's what living in their world is-a big lie. An illusion where everyone looks the other way and pretends that nothing unpleasant exists at all, no goblins of the dark, no ghosts of the soul."
— Libba Bray

"If God has nothing better to do than punish schoolgirls for a bit of tomfoolery, then I've no use for God. "
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"Why is it that some secrets can drown you while some pull you close to others in a way you never want to lose?"
— Libba Bray

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
— Oscar Wilde

"The heart was made to be broken."
— Oscar Wilde

"And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry
the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die."
— Oscar Wilde

"Some things are too important to be taken seriously."
— Oscar Wilde

"To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life."
— Oscar Wilde

"Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious."
— Oscar Wilde

"Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them."
— Oscar Wilde

"Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer."
— Oscar Wilde

"Whenever a man does a thouroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest of motives."
— Oscar Wilde

"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."
— Oscar Wilde

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
— Oscar Wilde

"Arguments are to be avoided, they are always vulgar and often convincing."
— Oscar Wilde

"We live in an age where unnecessary things are our only necessaries."
— Oscar Wilde

"There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution."
— Oscar Wilde

"Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures."
— Oscare wilde

"I don’t say we all ought to misbehave. But we ought to look as if we could"
— Oscar Wilde