Under the Same Stars Quotes

“Words matter. The right ones can open a door or a heart. The wrong ones can seal your fate.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“His ambitions were far greater. For this he needed a war and for war he needed to create an enemy. This was easy, what with the historians and their lessons gone.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“What's the use of stories? They're made up things. They're pretty lies."
"Oh no, that isn't true. A story is... well, it's a love letter. Sent from the present or the past to the future.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“Forgive me, Liebchen. What I have said earlier is a lie. There's no such thing as "just" a story. A story is a form of magic. It changes you from the inside and you are never the same after. Once you know about other lives. So it's no wonder that King Aldred insisted on burning the books. People hurled entire libraries. Philosophy, poetry. Fables and fairy tales. Martyrs, those books. They shrieked as their pages blackened and curled. But the ideas inside them would not burn. Aided by sympathetic wind, the remnants rose up. They pressed themselves against woolen coats and stuck fast, shinning out like singed medals until the curious peeled them off and read each rebellion aloud— "calumny", "serendipitous", "justice", "prevail"— and the spell took hold. No. You cannot kill what lives inside of books.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“Never let anyone hide the truth of history and replace it with myth.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“It seemed as if the world allowed pretty girls to do and say things for which they punished ordinary girls.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“No incident is isolated. The past is with us always. This is the lesson of history and why it is important not to”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“She loved the first five minutes after midnight—“because that is when everything feels like possibility.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“What happens next is this: He kisses her. It is Sophie's first kiss. It seems to her that, for as long as there are stars and a river of time running backward and forward, carrying the world moment by moment, this kiss will exist in every one of them.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow she'd eat cottage cheese and exercise and be the daughter everyone wanted her to be: a smaller version of herself.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“The frog is in a pot of water on the stove. He doesn’t know that, just thinks he’s in a pond. It’s water, after all. But slowly, very slowly, the heat is turned up. So slowly that the frog doesn’t realize he’s in danger. He might think, Boy, this water has gotten warmer. But he gets used to the warmer temperature soon enough. He accepts it as normal. Until the heat is increased again. Now it’s very uncomfortable. Still, he adjusts. On and on it goes, degree by degree, until at last the water is boiling. The frog is starting to cook. I’ve got to get out of this boiling pot now! the frog thinks in a panic. But of course, by that time, it is too late. He is done for. That is how they do it. They take away someone’s rights. Well, you think, it’s not my rights. And maybe that is a bad person. Maybe they did something wrong. People go on with their lives. They adjust. The first outrage seems so long ago, so benign now that they have gotten used to all the others that followed until they can no longer remember a time when what they call normal used to be considered outrageous, immoral, and brutal.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“the incremental, desensitizing way the Third Reich made the unthinkable not just possible but acceptable to so many. How the Reichstag Fire in 1933 was used to justify seizing power. The inciting of fear. The Gestapo being given full rein to operate above the law. The creation of a national “enemy” by demonizing Jewish and Roma people, those with disabilities, and anyone queer. Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” which destroyed Jewish homes and businesses. The stripping of rights. The wearing of the yellow star. The deportations. The camps. All of it done so quickly and with such efficiency that it was numbing.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars

“forget. We are always in a conversation with history.”
― Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars