Libba Bray

“Dans chaque fin, il y a un début.”

“From the elevator, Mabel watched the old woman's bare feet hobbling away, a trail of salt and the lace hem of her nightgown left in her wake like sea foam.”

“Memphis found his smile. 'You know me, sir. I don't wear worry.”

“She holds up a finger. "I'm getting to it. Don't rush a girl in the middle of her exposition.”

“I miss Latin. So much fun--all those exciting verbs that don't come until the end of the sentence. It's like a movie trailer for language.”

“-¿Estáis listas? ¿Empiezo? Había una vez cuatro chicas. Una era guapa. Otra era lista. Otra encantadora y la cuarta... [...] misteriosa. Pero estaban heridas. Había algo en ellas que les faltaba. Algo en la sangre. Grandes sueños. Ah, lo olvidaba. Lo siento, tenía que haberlo dicho antes: eran todas soñadoras, las cuatro [...]. Noche tras noche, las chicas se reunían. Y pecaban [...] Su pecado consistía en que creían. Creían que podían ser diferentes. Especiales. Creían que podían cambiar lo que eran: chicas heridas a quienes nadie quería. Marginadas. Estarían vivas, las adorarían, las necesitarían. Serían necesarias. Pero se equivocaban. [...] Fueron por mal camino. Las traicionaron sus propias esperanzas estúpidas. Las cosas no podían cambiar para ellas, porque en realidad no tenían nada de especial. Así que la vida las arrastró, las condujo y ellas se dejaron llevar, ¿entendéis? Se fueron apagando hasta quedar reducidas a fantasmas vivientes, persiguiéndose entre sí.”

“Isn’t this what happens in the movies a lot? There’s some old dude or woman who tells your fortune and is all, ‘Oh, you’re gonna die or make a boatload of money or meet a girl. Now give me all your cash’?” Boz yammered.Mrs. Smith bristled. “I can tell your fortune right now without even consulting your palm.”“You can?”“Yes. You are an idiot. You will always be an idiot.”

“Our days are numbered in the book of days, Most High," Gorgon murmurs as the garden comes once more into view. "That is what gives them sweetness and purpose.”

“People can live with only so much honesty. And sometimes, people can surprise you.”

“With no plan of escape in sight, I've been resigned to the life of a cosseted young lady of London society as Grandmama and I pay calls. We drink tea that is too weak and never hot enough for my liking. the ladies pass the time with gossip and hearsay. This is what they have in place of freedom - time and gossip. Their lives are small and careful. I do not wish to live this way. I should like to make my mark. To venture opinions that may not be polite or ever correct but are mine nonetheless. If I am to be hanged for anything, I should like to feel that I go to the fallows on my own strength.”

“Why was his grief more powerful than his love? Why couldn't he find it within himself to fight back?Why am I not enough to live for?”

“It wasn't my doing. It is the drink and the laudanum and the opium and that bloody refusal to live. That selfish grief. I thought I could change it with magic, but I can't. People will be who they are, and there is not enough magic in any world to change that.”

“Absence is a curious thing. When friends are absent, they seem to loom ever larger, till the lack of them is all one can feel.”

“Do not be tempted by English roses. Their beauty fades, but their thorns are forever.”

“Will this be my life forevermore? Careful tea parties and the quiet fear that I don't belong, that I'm a fraud? I held magic in my hands! I tasted freedom in a land where summer doesn't end. I outsmarted the Rakshana with a boy whose kiss I still feel somehow. was it all for naught? I'd rather not have known any of it than have it snatched away after a taste.”

“For a brief while, the women ask us questions: are we looking forward to our debuts? Did we enjoy this opera or that play? As we give our slight answers, they smile, and I cannot read what is behind their expressions. do they envy us our youth and beauty? Do they feel happiness and excitement for the lives that lie ahead of us? Or do they wish for another chance at their own lives? A different chance?”

“It is all I can do not to confide to the girl closest to me: "If I should die during tea - asphyxiated by my own corset - please do not let them bury me in such a hideous dress or I shall come back to haunt you.”

“We take such pains to be polite. We never say what we mean. For all it matters, we could greet each other and speak only of cheese - "How was your Limburger, miss?" "Salty as a ripe Stinking Bishop, thank you." "Ah, very cheddar, miss. I'll have your Stilton brought to your Camembert, then." - and no one would likely notice.”

“No. It is impossible to maintain a smile in my brother's presence. Monks haven't the sort of patience required.”

“I stare at the pile of discarded remnants and think of my mother. Did she touch that pillar there? Does her scent still linger in a fragment of glass or a splinter of wood? A terrible emptiness settles into my chest. No matter how much I go about living, there are always small reminders that make the loss fresh again.”

“We abandon our backboards along with our decorum, racing for the stairs and the promise of freedom, however temporary it may be."Walk!" Mrs. Nightwing shouts. When we cannot seem to heed her advice, she bellows after us that we are savages not fit for marriage. She adds that we shall be the shame of the school and something else besides, but we are down the first flight of stairs, and her words cannot touch us.”

“Miss Temple, perhaps you will demonstrate the proper curtsy for us?"Without ado, Cecily temple, She Who Can Do No Wrong, settles to the floor in a long, slow, graceful arc that seems to defy gravity. It is a thing of beauty. I am hideously jealous."Thank you, Miss Temple."Yes. Thank you, you little demon beast. May you marry a man who eats garlic with every meal.”

“There is a particular circle of hell not mentioned in Dante's famous book. It is called comportment, and it exists in schools for young ladies across the empire. I do not know how it feels to be thrown into a lake of fire. I am sure it isn't pleasant. But I can say with all certainty that walking the length of a ballroom with a book upon one's head and a backboard strapped to one's back while imprisoned in a tight corset, layers of petticoats, and shoes that pinch is a form of torture even Mr. Alighieri would find too hideous to document in his Inferno.”

“Yes, fine," I say, feeling dead inside. They don't know what they're in for at Spence, getting me, a ghost of a girl who'll nod and smile and take her tea who isn't really here.”

“Right now, with that lock of hair falling in his eyes, he's the brother I've missed, the one who once brought me stones from the sea, told me they were rajah's jewels. I want to tell him that I'm afraid I'm going mad by degrees and that nothing seems entirely real to me anymore. I want to tell him about the vision, have him pat me on the head in that irritating way and dismiss it with a perfectly logical doctor's explaination. I want to ask him if it's possible that a girl can be born unlovable, or does she just become that way? I want to tell him everything and have him understand.”

“Fashionable debutantes in pastel chiffon party dresses wilt into leather club chairs like frosted petit fours melting under the July sun.”

“Bitches will take your ass down if you try to publish that. Peace out.”

“People will believe anything if it means they can go on with their lives and not have to think too hard about it.”

“Barry, let me give you a history lesson, Ladybird Hope-style. When the Vietnamese got kids hooked on drugs and we had to fight a war to stop it, did we give in? No! We said, “Crack is wack!” and we made sure everybody could have guns instead of drugs. Back before the British were our friends, and they had a mean king who made us pay too much tax instead of just having hot princes who go to nightclubs, they wanted to keep us from bringing freedom to the people of Mexico and making it a state, and George Washington had to chop down that cherry tree and write the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and that’s the reason we fought World War II, and why we keep fighting, because those freedom-hating people out there want to take away our right to be rich and good-lookin’ and have gated communities and designer sweatpants like the ones from my Ladybird Hope Don’t Sweat it line, and they want us all to learn to speak Muslim and let the lawyers stop us from teaching about Adam and Eve and that will be the day that every child gets left behind.”

“Often, the monsters we create in our imagination are not nearly as frightening as the monstrous acts perpetrated by ordinary human beings in the aim of one cause or another.”

“No, you're right. I shan't ever understand your willingness to lie down and die," Felicity barks. "If you won't at least try to fight, I have no sympathy for you.”

“They see her differently now, as somebody. And isn't that what everyone wants? To be seen?”

“We all walk in a land of dreams. For what are we but atoms and hope, a handful of stardust and sinew? We are weary travelers trying to find our way home on a road that never ends. Am I a part of your dream? or are you but a part of mine?”

“Adina appealed to the sky. "We asked for rescue and you sent us incompetent rockstar pirates with a broken ship and perfect abs?""Thank you, God," Petra said.”

“And please, stay away from those books you devour. They are putting the most fantastical tales into your head.”

“What about you and me, Adina?” Duff said, sidling up to her by the railing. “I know I screwed up. But do you think we could start over?”Adina thought about everything that had happened. Part of her wanted to kiss Duff McAvoy, the tortured British trust-fund-runaway-turned-pirate-of-necessity who loved rock ‘n’ roll and mouthy-but-vulnerable bass-playing girls from New Hampshire. But he didn’t exist. Not really. He was a creature of TV and her imagination, a guy she’d invented as much as he’d invented himself. And this was what she suddenly understood about her mother: how with each man, each husband, she was really trying to fill in the sketchy parts of herself and become somebody she could finally love. It was hard to live in the messiness and easier to believe in the dream. And in that moment, Adina knew she was not her mother after all. She would make mistakes, but they wouldn’t be the same mistakes. Starting now.“Sorry,” she said, heading for the bow, where a spot of sun looked inviting. ”Oh, also, about that blog? Just so you know, my dads know a lot of gay lawyers. Bitches will take your ass down if you try to publish that. Peace out.”

“The world expected girls to pluck and primp and put on heels. Meanwhile, boys dressed in rumpled T-shirts and baggy pants and misplace their combs, and yet you were suppose to fall at their feet? Unacceptable.”

“...There's an -or- in -whore- because you always have a choice to respect your body and say no.”

“It's strange how deliberate people are after a death. All the indecision suddenly vanishes into clear, defined moments - changing the linens, choosing a dress or a hymn, the washing up, the muttering of prayers. All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day.”

“The police have asked for my help. There's been a murder.""A murder! Oh, my. Let me just change my shoes," Evie said excitedly. "It won't be a minute.”

“Petra turned to her. "Everybody lies about who they are. Name one person here who isn't doing that and I will drop out right now!"Shanti felt that snake of truth coil around her legs, threatening to squeeze. "I didn't mean...""No one ever does." Petra said, shoving the baton back at Shanti.”

“You know, people, just being beautiful isn't enough." Tiara looked confused. "But... it always has been.”

“Because there's nothing wrong with you... that can't be fixed.”

“Oh, honey, of course it hurts! Beauty is pain. But you don't want to look like a troll, do you?”

“...I think we should find some kind of shelter; a cave or something.""I don't want to do that! What if there's like, a creature living in the cave?" Tiara said. "Seriously, I saw this show once where these people were stranded on an island and there were these other people who were sort of crazy-slash-bad and there was this polar bear creature running around.""What happened?" Miss Ohio asked."I don't know. My parents got divorced in the middle of season two and we lost our TiVo.”

“Everyone's dying. A little, every day. Make it count.”

“And now if you'll excuse me, I should like to finish my book, alone, without the presence of a single ringleted girl to disrupt me. If you should come for me at dinner and find me in my chair, gone to the angels at last, you shall know that I died alone, which is to say in a state of utter bliss.”

“I feel a tug in the air. The magic. When I look over, Felicity has her eyes closed in concentration, and a faint smile curves those full lips. Suddenly, Lady Denby breaks wind with an enormous crackling sound. There is no hiding the shock and horror on her face as she realizes what she's done. She breaks wind again, and several women clear their throats and look away as if they can pretend no to notice the offense.”

“I just read this great quote by Junot Diaz, he was talking about true intimacy, and he was saying that it was the willingness to be vulnerable and to be found out. That’s what I felt that YA did. It wasn't pretentious, and it wasn’t hiding its heart. It wanted to be found out...It felt like those moments when you go to a party and you're standing around for a long time, going, I don't fit in here, what am I going to talk to these people about? And everybody's getting drunk, and then you find this one person, and you end up sitting in some corner talking about all these arcane things.And then before you know it you're having a conversation about the meaning of life and it's four o’clock in the morning. That kind of feeling, that kind of intimacy — I felt like that's what I got from YA.”

“Jericho lay back down on his side, watching her breathe just an arm's length from him. She was not beautiful while she slept; her mouth hung open and she snored very lightly, and this, despite everything that had happened, made him smile.”