Libba Bray

“We have traveled through space and time. We have been many places. Visited many worlds. And there is good news: the acoustics everywhere are terrific.”

“You've influenced the world not because you wanted to hug it and cuddle it and call it sweet thing, but because one day you wanted to beat the crap out of somebody but you didn't. You made a painting instead.”

“Maybe there’s a heaven, like they say, a place where everything we’ve ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find out human hijinks amusing. Or maybe we’re an abandoned project started by a deity who checked out a long time ago, but we’re still hard-wired to believe, to try to make meaning out of the seemingly random. Maybe we’re all part of the same unconscious stew, dreaming the same dreams, hoping the same hopes, needing the same connection, trying to find it, missing, trying again—each of us playing our parts in the other’s plotlines, just one big ball of human yarn tangled up together. Maybe this is it.”

“Next I know, I'll be calling myself the queen of Romania and wandering down the lane wearing my bed linens for a cape.”

“I know the English are terribly sentimental about the sea, but I can live without it.”

“That's some moon""Stop talking about my ass, you beast.”

“If this were a movie, I would bust a secret move so fierce the entire place would be razed to the ground. I'd finish with something snappy like "And don't forget my soda, punk" while I strolled off into the night.”

“Yes, go on. Leave. You're always coming and going. The rest of us are stuck here. Do you think he'd still love you if he knew who you are? He doesn't really care—only when it suits him.”

“A man bumps me on his busy way without so much as an apology. But that is all right. I forgive you, busy man about town with the sharp elbows. Hail and farewell to you! For I, Gemma Doyle, am to have a splendid Christmas in London town. All shall be well.God rest us merry gentlemen. And gentlewomen.”

“I will never, ever drink whiskey again. From now on, it's strictly sherry.”

“I'm going to eviscerate you and leave your organs on a pike in the yard as a warning to those who wear large jewelry.”

“Even Felicity can't keep from sputtering with laughter. I wish I could use my evil eye. Or at least my evil boot right smack against Cecily’s backside.”

“Didn't you have any sadistic nannies who told you these tales to keep you quiet and well behaved at night? Heavens, what's to become of the Empire if governesses have lost their touch for scaring the wits out of their girls?”

“Felicity laughs and takes on the tone of a fashionable lady. "Darling, the Bryn-Joneses have just done the most marvelous thing in their parlor with human blood. We simply must have ours done straightaway!”

“One could argue that it's romantic to die for love. Of course, then you're dead and unable to take that honeymoon trip to the Alps with all the other fashionable young couples, which is a shame.”

“Oh, I didn't think it wise to hide it. Might not be able to find it again," I say, cheerily. "It's sitting in plain view on your chair in the great hall. I do hope that was the best place for it.”

“I'm an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.”

“Beauty, grace, and charm my foot. It's a school for sadists with good tea-serving skills.”

“I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I've got to think.”

“The glow dies down, and she's standing at the end of my bed--the one who's been following me around leaving feather messages. I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny, riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides and a worn Great Temolo decal near the left shoulder. Her wings are a crazy black-and-white-checkered pattern, like they've been spray-painted at a body shop to look like hipster sneakers.”

“She dances a little jig. "This would make one hell of a TV show, huh?" "Yeah. But no one would believe it." I should let it go. But it's like the hole, like the door, and I have to know. Or at least, I have to ask. "Hey, Dulcie, was any of that real?" She finishes her dance and the wings come to rest. "Who's to say what's real or not?" "Yeah, but--my barometer on reality, not so good since I started going crazy. "Yeah, well, who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy?”

“That's totally their interpreter," a girl with a lip ring informs us. "Even though they totally record their music in English, they totally speak in Inuktitut. Totally.”

“There's no such thing as nothing. In every nothing, there's a something. In fact, there could be everything!”

“As a kid, I imagined lots of different scenarios for my life. I would be an astronaut. Maybe a cartoonist. A famous explorer or rock star. Never once did I see myself standing under the window of a house belonging to some druggie named Carbine, waiting for his yard gnome to steal his stash so I could get a cab back to a cheap motel where my friend, a neurotic, death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting for me so we could get on the road to an undefined place and a mysterious Dr. X, who would cure me of mad cow disease and stop a band of dark energy from destroying the universe.”

“You don't know me, dude," he says, not smiling this time. Gonzo examines his cards, prepping for his next move. "People always think that 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 ****ed up for no reason at all.”

“Jeez, someone needs to push the reset button on this planet.”

“He frowns. "A dance with the carnivorous Felicity? Why? Has she eaten all the other available gentlemen?”

“He's attracted to the smell of manure," Felicity says. "You might wallow in the stables to bring out the full flower of his love.”

“Sometimes, Johannes would pop his head in the filing room and ask, "Need anything?" 'Yes. I would like you to ravage me here on the floor and swear your undying love to me.'"No. Thanks. I'm good.”

“In this man’s smile was all the unfairness of the world in its thuggish seduction. “Just come with me. We’ll take care of you.”“No, you won’t.” Taylor stroked the man’s cheek. She reached her arms up to cradle the back of his head and, with the skill of a champion, she broke his neck. Then she dragged him into the bushes, took his gun and walkie-talkie, and kept moving.”

“I love you for who you are, not who the world thinks you should be.”

“What did I do to make Mommy leave?”“You didn’t do anything. This isn’t your fault.”“Then why?” she’d wailed.“I don’t know,” her daddy had said, and he looked so sad.“It isn’t fair!”“No, it isn’t, baby. Not by a mile. The world’s only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your own little cave, that’s one less fighter on the side of fair.”

“I’m a wild girl from a cursed line of women. I paw at the ground and run under the moon. I like the feel of my own body. I’m not a slut or a nympho or someone who’s just asking for it. And if I talk too loud it’s just that I’m trying to be heard.”

“Sometimes I just want to go in a room and break things and scream. Like, it’s so much pressure all the time and if you get upset or angry, people say, ‘Are you on the rag of something?’ And it’s like I want to say, ‘No. I’m just pissed off right now. Can’t I just be pissed off? How come that’s not okay for me?’ Like my dad will say, ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re hysterical.’ And I’m totally not being hysterical! I’m just mad. And he’s the one losing it. But then I feel embarrassed anyway. So I slap on that smile and pretend everything’s okay even though it’s not.”

“We have work to do if you are not to be a total failure like high-waisted, acid-wash jeans.”

“I’m not that kind of Indian,” Shanti said, her practiced smile never leaving her face, though it faltered just a bit, and in that slight wobble was something hard and angry, something that looked like centuries of colonial oppression boiling up into an I’m-going-to-kick-your-ass-in-this-pageant-and-then-take-over-all-your-beauty-out-sourcing-needs hatred.”

“I am staring into the hissing face of a cobra. A surprisingly pink tongue slithers in and out of a cruel mouth while an Indian man whose eyes are the blue of blindless inclines his head towards my mother and explains in Hindi that cobras make very good eating.”

“I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion revisions, large and small, that go into the writing of a book.”

“People see what they want to see when they need to.”

“Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one's is watching them so they can be who they really are”

“I'd say..." Petra crossed her legs, tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. "I'd say, I am too fucking fabulous for one gender. Oh, and can we please get rid of the cheesy dance numbers? It's like torture step-ball-change.""I'd say I am not a race. I am an individual," Nicole said.Sosie moved her fingers gracefully, but no one understood. She waited for a moment. "I would say, learn to hear me in my own voice. I'm hearing impaired, not invisible.”

“Adina gave a little shriek. "That fish just swam past my leg! Creepy! Where did it go?""To your right! Two o'clock! Get it!""You are officially the most bloodthirsty vegetarian ever.”

“What makes a girl a girl? What makes a guy a guy? Do you have to be what they want you to be? Or do you stop and listen to that voice inside you? I know who I am. I'm Petra West. And I'm a girl. You want me to sleep somewhere else, fine. Whatever. But I'm not going to pretend to be somebody I'm not. I've done enough of that.”

“You are truly Satan's sequined spawn.”

“You know what else is hot?" said a nameless blonde as she put her arm around the one black girl. "What?""Bisexuals.""Totally. Well, not like real bisexuals who are just sort of your everyday people, but, like, the kind of bisexuals you see in magazines wearing nothing but body paint and kissing both boys and girls to promote a new single.""Totally, totally hot.”

“The Corporation would like to apologize for the preceding pages. Of course, it's not all right for girls to behave this way. Sexuality is not meant to be this way - an honest, consensual expression in which a girl might take an active role when she feels good and ready and not one minute before. No. Sexual desire is meant to sell soap. And cars. And beer. And religion.”

“Sosie wasn't sure how to answer. Since she could remember, she'd had crushes on both girls and guys. They were person-specific infatuations - Brian Levithan's wicked sense of humour was every bit as sexy as Valerie Martnez's sweet smile and amazing krunk routines. It seemed odd to Sosie that she had to make some hard-and-fast decision about such an arbitrary, individual thing as attraction, like having to declare an orientation major: I am straight with a minor in gay.”

“Wanna rock you, girl, with a butterfly tunic. / No, I'm not gay, I'm just your emo enuch. / Gonna smile real shy, won't cop a feel, / 'cause I'm your virgin crush, your supersafe deal. / Let those other guys keep sexing. / You and me, we be texting / 'bout unicorns and rainbows and our perfect love. / Girl, we fit together like a hand in a glove. / Now I don't mean that nasty, tell your mum don't get mad. / I even wrote 'You're awesome' on your maxi pads.”

“Mary Lou wore the ring faithfully. She studied the coy girls the ones who pretended not to get the dirty joke that made Mary Lou stifle a laugh. The ones who practiced the shy downward glance who pretended giggly outrage when a boy made a suggestive remark who waited to be seen and never made the first move. The ones who called other girls sluts and judged with ease. The good girls.Occasionally from the school bus windows she would see other wild girls on the edges of cornfields running without shoes hair unkempt. Their short skirts rode up flashing warning lights of flesh: backs of knees the curve of a calf a smooth plain of thigh. Sometimes it was just a girl waiting for a bus but in her eyes Mary Lou recognized the feral quality. That was a girl who wanted to race trains under a full moon a girl who liked the feel of silk stockings against her skin the whisper promise of a boy's neck under her lips who did not wait for life to choose her but wished to do the choosing herself. It made Mary Lou ache with everything she held back.”

“I think that the lady dies not because she leaves the tower for the outside world but because she lets herself float through the world pulled by the current after a dream. Do you mean she should of paddled Cecily asks. Miss Moore laughs. In a manner of speaking yes. Ann stops drumming. But it wouldn't matter whether she paddled or not. She's cursed. No matter what she does she'll die. And she'll die if she stays in the tower too. Perhaps not for a long time but she will die. We all will. Miss Moore says softly.”