Liz > Liz's Quotes

“ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOMEDAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS.

Death took a step backwards.

It was impossible to read expression in Azrael's features.

Death glanced sideways at the servants.

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“Time, Kate was learning, was like a river. You might put up obstacles, even divert it briefly, but the river had a will of it's own. It wanted to flow a certain way. You had to force it to change. You had to be willing to sacrifice.”
― John Stephens, The Emerald Atlas

“When Ahsoka opened her hands, she was not surprised to find that two lightsabers, rough and unfinished, were waiting. They would need more work, but they were hers. When she turned them on, they shone the brightest white.”
― E.K. Johnston, Ahsoka

“The immigrants pour into the cities, and the edges of the neighborhoods fray, then braid themselves into new American patterns. These new Americans push out into this country one step ahead of ancestors touching spectral fingers to the generations of the diaspora. Go, they whisper, but do not forget us. Outside a redbrick prison, protestors set up for another day of placards and marches, cries for justice that go unheard by the two Italian anarchists inside—a fishmonger and a shoemaker, seekers of the American dream now appealing their fate in its court while the electric chair bides its time. The lady in the harbor hoists her torch. The Gold Mountain twinkles in the early-morning fog hugging the shoreline of California, a pretty mirage. The atoms vibrate, always on the verge of some new shift. Shift and the electrons lean toward particle or wave. Shift and the action requires a reaction. Shift and the stroke of a typewriter elevates i to I, changes God to god. Shift and the beast acquires a thumb; the thumb, a weapon. Shift and rights become wrongs; the wrongs, justification. It’s all in the perspective.”
― Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams

“We are made by what we are asked to bear, Ling Chan,” he’d said.”
― Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams

“For dreams, too, are ghosts, desires chased in sleep, gone by morning.”
― Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams

“Every city is a ghost.
New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park.”
― Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams

“The land remembers everything, though. It knows the steps of this nation’s ballet of violence and forgetting. The land receives our dead, and the dead sing softly the song of us: blood.”
― Libba Bray, Before the Devil Breaks You

“I mean that she was complicated. Everybody is,” Ling said quietly. “Don’t erase her like that. She deserves better.”
― Libba Bray, Before the Devil Breaks You

“The land is old, the land is vast, he has no future, he has no past, his coat is sewn with many woes, he'll bring the dead, the King of Crows.”
― Libba Bray, Before the Devil Breaks You

“DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“I am a genius of infinite potential and highly limited patience. People shouldn’t try me so.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“The Moors exist in eternal twilight, in the pause between the lightning strike and the resurrection. They are a place of endless scientific experimentation, of monstrous beauty, and of terrible consequences.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“I think the rules were different there. It was all about science, but the science was magical. It didn’t care about whether something could be done. It was about whether it should be done, and the answer was always, always yes.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Her mind--brilliant, traitorous, prone to devouring itself--did not stop fretting, but at least she was in control again. It was odd, to think of one's own mind as the enemy. It wasn't always.”
― Seanan McGuire, Come Tumbling Down

“You've been haunting me my whole life.”
― Sasha Peyton Smith, The Witch Haven

“I think perhaps this is how we survive in the world. Passing little bits of our magic back and forth to each other when the world takes it from us. It's survival. It's love. It's family.”
― Sasha Peyton Smith, The Witch Haven

“I guess my point is that teenage girls aren't supposed to be powerful, you know? Everybody hates teenage girls. They hate our bodies and hate us if we want to change them. They hate the things we're supposed to like but hate it when we like other things even more because that means we're ruining their things. Were somehow this great corrupting influence, even though we've barely got legal agency of our own. But the three of us the four of us, counting you were powerful.”
― Hannah Abigail Clarke, The Scapegracers

“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

“Felicity and I watch the dancers moving as one. They spin about like the earth on it's axis, enduring the dark, waiting for the sun.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“Gemma, you see how it is. They've planned our entire lives, from what we shall wear to whom we shall marry and where we shall live. It's one lump of sugar in your tea whether you like it or not and you'd best smile even if you're dying deep inside. 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. Please, please, please, Gemma, let's not die inside before we have to.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“She holds and I do not break away, and that is something after all. We lie there, tethered to each other by the fragile promise of our fingers while the night grows bolder. Unafraid, it opens its mouth and swallows us whole.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“Mhe varujta. Trust me as if my soul were yours.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“A figure in white coalesced behind the Firewitch. She walked stiffly, her hands extended and her eyes rolled back in her head. The salamander cloak’s fire-flap covered half her face. Ash coated her brow.

Aeduan didn’t know how the Threadwitch was here. He didn’t know why either. He only knew he couldn’t look away.

The Threadwitch walked, each step evenly spaced, to the Firewitch. He was a monster fully cleaved now, yet when he wriggled and snarled at Iseult, she showed no fear. No reaction at all.

Instead, she lowered the fire-flap on the salamander cloak, then with her mouth stretched wide … she snapped her teeth at the air.

The Firewitch collapsed. Dead.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“From the day she had stabbed Aeduan in the heart, that heart had become hers—and she would not let this be his end.”
― Susan Dennard, Bloodwitch

“A pair of starfighters. Jedi starfighters. Only two.
Two is enough.
Two is enough because the adults are wrong, and their younglings are right.
Though this is the end of the age of heroes, it has saved its best for last.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Because people die. The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes