"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)

"Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't know yet what power feels like. But this is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us."
— 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

"I wish to live for myself. I should never want to be trapped."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"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

"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)

"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 shan't ever understand your willingness to lie down and die, Felicity bars. 'If you won't at least try to fight, I have no sympathy for you.' "
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"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

" 'We're like pretty horses, and just as on horses, they mean to put blinders on us so we can't look left or right but only straight ahead where they would lead.'"
— 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)

"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

"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)

"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

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

"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

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

"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)