Libba Bray
What is it about writing an author bio that gives me that deer-in-headlights feeling? It's not exactly like I'm going to say "I was born in Alabama…" and somebody's going to jump up and snarl, "Oh yeah? Prove it!" At least I hope not.
I think what gets me feeling itchy is all that emphasis on the facts of a life, while all the juicy, relevant, human oddity stuff gets left on the cutting room floor. I could tell you the facts–I lived in Texas for most of my life; I live in New York City with my husband and six-year-old son now; I have freckles and a lopsided smile; I'm allergic to penicillin.
But that doesn't really give you much insight into me. That doesn't tell you that I stuck a bead up my nose while watching TV when I was four and thought I'd have to go to the ER and have it cut out. Or that I once sang a punk version of "Que Sera Sera" onstage in New York City. Or that I made everyone call me "Bert" in ninth grade for no reason that I can think of. See what I mean?
God is in the details. So with that in mind, here is my bio. Sort of.
TEN THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME by Libba Bray
1. I lived in Texas until I was 26 years old, then I moved to New York City with $600.00 in my shoe ('cause muggers won't take it out of your shoe, y'know . . . riiiiight . . .) and a punchbowl (my grandmother's gift) under my arm. I ended up using the punchbowl box as an end table for two years.
2. My dad was a Presbyterian minister. Yes, I am one of those dreaded P.K.s–Preacher's Kids. Be afraid. Be very afraid . . .
3. The first story I ever wrote, in Mrs. McBee's 6th grade English class, was about a girl whose family is kidnapped and held hostage by a murderous lot of bank robbers who intend to kill the whole family–including the dog–until the 12-year-old heroine foils the plot and saves the day. It included colored pencil illustrations of manly-looking, bearded criminals smoking, and, oblivious to the fact that The Beatles had already sort of laid claim to the title, I called my novel, HELP. My mom still has a copy. And when I do something she doesn't like, she threatens to find it.
4. My favorite word is "redemption." I like both its meaning and the sound. My least favorite word is "maybe." "Maybe" is almost always a "no" drawn out in cruel fashion.
5. My three worst habits are overeating, self-doubt, and the frequent use of the "f" word.
6. The three things I like best about myself are my sense of humor, my ability to listen, and my imagination.
7. I have an artificial left eye. I lost my real eye in a car accident when I was eighteen. In fact, I had to have my entire face rebuilt because I smashed it up pretty good. It took six years and thirteen surgeries. However, I did have the pleasure of freezing a plastic eyeball in an ice cube, putting it in a friend's drink, ("Eyeball in your highball?") and watching him freak completely. Okay, so maybe that's not going down on my good karma record. But it sure was fun.
8. In 7th grade, my three best friends and I dressed up as KISS and walked around our neighborhood on Halloween. Man, we were such dorks.
9. I once spent New Year's Eve in a wetsuit. I'd gone to the party in a black dress that was a little too tight (too many holiday cookies) and when I went to sit down, the dress ripped up the back completely. Can we all say, mortified? The problem was, my friends were moving out of their house–everything was packed and on a truck–and there was nothing I could put on . . . but a wetsuit that they still had tacked to the wall. I spent the rest of the party maneuvering through throngs of people feeling like a giant squid.
10. I got married in Florence, Italy. My husband and I were in love but totally broke, so we eloped and got married in Italy, where he was going on a business trip. We had to pull a guy off the street to be our witness. It was incredibly romantic.
“And she wanted so much to make him happy that she forgot how to make herself happy”“That is not happiness. That is kind of murder, yeah?”
“The dull pain of truth weights my soul, pulling it under. I am left hopelessly awake.”
“I don't know why I feel so wounded with Kartik's obvious infatuation with Pippa. There's no romance between us. There's nothing that tethers us but this dark secret neither of us wants. It's not Kartik's longing that hurts. It's my own. It's knowing that I'll never have what she has--a beauty so powerful it brings things to you. I fear I will always have to chase things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.”
“...dreams were dreams and reality was reality and she felt people were better off understanding the difference.”
“Does my new feminism make me look fat?”
“On TV, talking heads wrung their hands over a lack of traditional feminine values and wondered if girls’ sports were to blame. Then they cut to a commercial featuring a sexy college coed vacuuming her dorm room in her underwear.”
“Agent Jones held Sinjin’s face in his hands. “I’m going to make balloon animals. People need balloon animals.”“How right you are, strange delusional man,” Sinjin said.”
“New Maxi-Pad Pets. Accessories for your period.Brought to you by The Corporation: In your homes andin your pants.”
“I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time."-A Great and Terrible Beauty”
“No one can steal our dream.”
“We're all damaged somehow."-A Great and Terrible Beauty”
“My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.”
“These are hard times. The world hurts. We live in fear and forget to walk with hope. But hope has not forgotten you. So ask it to dinner. It's probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation.”
“But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on.”
“Sometimes when the wind blows through the leaves, it sounds like your name. It’s like a sigh then. The most beautiful sound I ever heard. A gentle breeze catches in the branches then and I hear it, soft and low, a murmured prayer – Gem-ma, Gem-ma – and then the leaves trail delicate fingers across my cold cheeks.”
“Thou shalt not steal. I seem to recall that being one of God’s I’d rather you didn’t lest I have to smite you into ash commandments.”
“I'm just saying it's not all sand castles and ninjas.”
“The dark does not weep for itself because there is no light. Rather, it accepts that it is the dark.”
“You’ve been assigned an identity since birth. Then you spend the rest of your life walking around in it to see if it really fits. You try on all these different selves and abandon just as many. But really it’s about dismantling all that false armor, getting down to what’s real.”
“People always think 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 fucked up and sad for no reason at all.”
“But as soon as the thought enters my mind, another one swims in and eats the first one like a shark. Fuck that, it burps.”
“In a world like this one, only the random makes sense.”
“Mawah meenon ne le plus poohlala," I say with an affected bow.”
“I change the world, the world changes me.”
“And when I wake, the room is white with the morning sun. The light is so bright it hurts my eyes. But I don't dare close them. I won't. Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, because it is morning; it is morning, and there is so much to see.”
“If you tell them what they want to hear, they don't bother to try to see.”
“Please do not strain yourself, Miss Doyle. I won't have my girls going cross-eyed in the name of art.”
“The face staring back at me isn't beautiful but she isn't something that would scare the horses, either.”
“How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage, for that matter.”
“I know I've done the right thing but I couldn't feel worse about it, and I suppose that is part of what it is to lead.”
“I can be whatever.You can be whatever.We can be whatever.Whatever, together.”
“You're special.I'm special.The whole world's special, so don't you forget it.The universe wants usAll to be happy,Full of smiles and all that stuff,All that stuffThat's happy and smiley.So get happy, happy, happy right now!Get happy, happy, happy right now!Get happy, happy, happy right now!”
“Maybe that's what real friendship is -- getting so used to people that you need to be annoyed by them.”
“Without further warning, the sky opens up and cries.”
“You evah hear of a magic screw?'I cough back a laugh. 'No. No, sir.”
“There are no wrong decisions ― only different ones.”
“To each his own magic.”
“How do people stay in love, anyway? Is it a choice? Or is it like those plants we studied in biology that mutate into something new and totally different but are still part of the same plant family?”
“All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day.”
“How now Mad Cow?”
“I thought I was having an existential crisis, but it was nothing.Please don't tailgate: body in trunk.”
“I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living.”
“I've been poked and prodded in places I'd always prided myself on keeping untouched for that one special doctor who gives me a ring and a promise someday.”
“I've never done acid, finding it hard to go willingly to a place that could be frightening, hellish, and totally beyond my control. A place much like high school.”
“Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary.”
“Why should we girls not have the same privileges as men? Why do we police ourselves so stringently- whittling each other down with cutting remarks or holding ourselves back from greatness with a harness woven of fear and shame and longing? If we do not deem ourselves worthy first, how shall we ever ask for more?”
“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.”
“But if we are to remain a great empire, we must have a greater understanding of the hearts and minds of others.”
“We are English, and I expect you to behave as such. No more crying.”
“There’s a moment of profound sadness that can be dispelled only by summoning my anger.”