"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

"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)

"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)

"And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time."
— 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)

"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

"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

""Do you ever feel that way?"
"Lonely?"
I search for the words. "Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As is you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt--'Ah! There I Am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it"
He nods, and I think he's appeasing me. I feel stupid of having said it. It's sentimental and true, and I've revealed a part of myself I shouldn't have.
"Do you know what I think?" Kartik says at last.
"What?"
"Sometimes, I think you can glimpse it in another.'"
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

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

"
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"There is an ancient tribal proverb I once heard in India. It says that before we can see properly we must first shed our tears to clear the way. "
— Libba Bray

"But we can't go back. We can only go forward."
— Libba Bray

"When I dream, I dream of him. For several nights now he’s come to me, waving from a distant shore as if he’s been waiting patiently for me to arrive. He doesn’t utter a word, but his smile says everything: I’ve missed you."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"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)

"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

"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

"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

""Because it is morning, it is morning, and there is so much to see. "
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, beacause it is morning; it is morning and there is so much to see."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"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 everything known.""
— Libba Bray (Rebel Angels)

"In a world like this one, only the random makes sense."
— Libba Bray (Going Bovine)

"
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. 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 (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

" 'There is never any turning back, Gemma. You have to go forward. Make the future yours, ' Kartik says."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"How I'd love to get away from here and be someone else for a while in a place where no one knows or expects certain things from me."
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try."
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"People always think they know other people, but they don’t. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won’t eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don’t know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel fucked up and sad for not reason at all.

"
— Libba Bray

"You’ve been assigned an identity since birth. Then you spend the rest of your life walking around in it to see if it really fits. You try on all these different selves and abandon just as many. But really it’s about dismantling all that false armor, getting down to what’s real.
-Going Bovine
"
— Libba Bray

"Please do not strain yourself, Miss Doyle. I won't have my girls going cross-eyed in the name of art."
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

""But...you could have whatever you wished."
"Exactly," he says, nuzzling my neck.
"But," I say, "you could turn stones to rubies or ride in a fine gentleman's carriage."
Kartik puts his hands on either side of my face. "To each his own magic," he says and kisses me again.
"
— Libba Bray