The King of Crows Quotes

“Stories were power. And whoever controlled the story controlled everything. A story could bring people together, or it could tear them apart. It could spread like a sickness, infecting people. It could lead them into battle or shake them into seeing what they had refused to see before.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“People you loved could be gone in a breath. So why didn't knowing that make it any easier to be vulnerable? To tell people that you loved them, that you were hurting, that you were afraid, or that, sometimes, at five in the morning, you were so alone in your own skin that you watched the weak light play across the ceiling, willing it toward dawn?”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Evie was still crying and so didn't know what Sam whispered to Theta over the top of her head. She only knew that now there were two sets of arms around her, holding her close, holding her up. She only knew that she had family after all.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Wasn't that how fairy tales worked? You told just enough of the terrible truth—There are cruel people. Not all parents love you.The world isn't fair by a long shot.—and you dressed it up in ogres and brave princesses and giants. Mostly, you reminded people that the evils of the world had to be fought. Even if you weren't sure you'd win. You still had to go into the monster's den. You had to face your fears. You still had to stand up to the monster.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“But if you abandoned the idea that such a paradise awaited you, and believed that you would live this life over and over again, would you not live the life you had more thoughtfully?”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Make a better history”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Jericho saw the land. And he saw the dead underneath the land. He saw them decomposing, their flesh sinking into the ground. The dead became the land. Nutrients for crops, which the living harvested and ate. The dead became the living until the living became the dead. An eternal recurrence. A circle. This was the oldest and most important story humankind told itself: that it could transcend death. All religion, all stories boiled down to this: We are born. We live. We struggle. We love. We search for meaning. We die. Again and again and again.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“It was always somebody’s turn. The Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Negroes or Chinese or Mexicans. A great wheel of bigotry, ever turning. Who got to decide what made somebody an American? America, the ideal of it at least, was its own form of elusive magic.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Simplifying people was a way of not having to think too much about them, to make them fit into your own story. People were inconvenient, though. Behind the idea of a person you constructed to suit yourself, the people you loved had their own stories- whole worlds going on inside- and you ignored them at your peril.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“She would live every day fully. She was not the same girl she'd been nearly a year ago. She would never see things so blithely again. Even now, as Evie watched the parade and the people alight with pride and joy, she knew how easily that same crowd could become angry. The things that divided them. The things that brought them together, too. They couldn't afford to become complacent.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“It's funny. I used to feel that I wouldn't care if I died. I just kept throwing myself at life, hoping I'd hit a bull's-eye eventually. I thought death would be a relief from all that feeling. A relief not to have all that pain. Not to care so much,' Evie said.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“That's what he always did, tell a joke or find someone else when things began to feel like something genuine. Well, he was tired of feeling haunted - by Louis, by his father's disappointment, and his mother's illness. He'd let himself fill up with ghosts of shame until there was no room for love. No more. No more.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“It was a thread woven through all of humankind: this need for story to explain the unexplainable, to comfort the hurting, to promise that no one was alone. Evie's uncle Will had said there was no greater power on earth than story. And in this shared moment, Memphis knew that it was so.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Alma Rene LaVoy was the most alive person Ling Chan has ever met. The pretty chorus girl was the light in the sky over Chinatown during a New Years celebration.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“There is no greater power on this earth than story....”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Mabel did deserve to Rest In Peace, and Evie knew she was a terrible person, because of there was any ghost she longed to see, even for just a moment, it was Mabel’s.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Do right. It's what Ling's mother would say. But in times like these, how could you know what was right? Ling sat on the steps for a while longer, watching Alma's champagne-colored dress swish down the street. Only when Alma rounded the corner did Ling let out the chocking sob.

"Good-bye," she whispered.

Nearby, the bird watched her intently.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Dreams are where we will meet again. In love, in yearning, in fear. Dreams, like countries, are ideas: all reality gestates first inside a dream. Dreams are information for those who read their tea leaves come morning. They are tiny little maps of souls. Of every secret, we push aside while we are awake.....Dreams know you better than you know yourself.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Did everyone from your little Hans Christian Andersen village look the same?”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Gideon isn't for sale mister.

Ah, yes. Like the Louisana Purchase, or Manhattan. I see. Should I have come with a purse full of beads and a wagon of diseased blankets? ... Can't you smell the history in the air? No doubt their grandfathers rushed across these prairies in their wagons, knocking down the natives, smashing in their brains in their zeal to stake for their claim. That pioneer spirit. My, what a land! I have learned so much from you”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Oh, why should it bother her? But it did. It wasn’t so much that Evie wanted Jericho as she wanted him to keep wanting her. It was utterly selfish, she knew. More about her vanity than anything else.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“People had to be who they were. The challenge was to love them for it. And to be honest when they’d hurt you. To apologize when you’d hurt them. It seemed pretty simple on the face of it. So why was it always so hard?”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“A country road. Men swaddled in white call themselves knights, protectors of the empire. The ghosts of the Confederacy pass the torch, and the men set fire to the night.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“The army builds its levees, claims victory over the river, but they will never control the great spirit of the waters. Nothing belongs to you, it whispers. The river changes course, digs in. It shapes the land the whole time. The river is not a line but a circle. The river is change, and change cannot be stopped. Change, it sings. Change or be lost.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“The army builds its levees, claims victory over the river, but they will never control the great spirit of the waters. Nothing belongs to you, it whispers. The river changes course, digs in. It shapes the land the whole time. The river is not a line but a circle. The river is change, and change cannot be stopped.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“What if our love is like a new species, something with no classification yet? What if what we have together doesn’t fit neatly into any labeled drawer? That doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“As a scientist, Ling had to keep an open and curious mind, to explore all sorts of permutations. It seemed to her that there were endless variations for love, too, if only people would allow their minds to consider them. Ling opened her eyes again. “Why…?” Ling stopped, afraid to say this aloud. “Why can’t we be something new?”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“She wanted to be held by Alma, only held, and Alma’s kiss was an announcement of wanting more. Alma’s mouth moved to Ling’s shoulder. Ling stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to get back to the moment they’d just shared. With a finger, Alma turned Ling’s face toward her own and kissed her with real passion. Ling liked the kiss very much, but she was afraid of what more might be expected. How could she make herself feel something she didn’t?”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Ling loved Alma, but when she thought of making that love sexual, it was like a wire that didn’t quite connect to a battery. It was more theoretical than actual. She liked kissing and cuddling, but she knew that alone wasn’t sufficient for Alma.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“There was rarely a moment when she wasn’t having to work around the limitations of her body. Discomfort was a daily fact of life. Sometimes the ache was a nuisance. Other times, it was a storm that clawed and pulled and made it hard to concentrate on anything else. Mostly, Ling resented pain because it kept her from thinking, and thinking was what Ling did best.”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows