Top 463 Quotes & Sayings by Libba Bray - Page 5

Memphis—it’s just a bird. Birds fly around, brother. It’s what they do. It’s not following you, and it’s not a sign. Unless you really did give it candy and flowers, in which case you are one strange brother.

Your mother and I do not approve of drinking. Have you not heard of the Eighteenth Amendment?” “Prohibition? I drink to its health whenever I can.

Reason was for suckers and Presbyterians.

I invited myself. Thought this table needed some class.

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.

He took comfort in the neon signs, the wild strands of jazz creeping out of clubs whenever happy swells of people pushed through the doors in their finery.

There were few things worse than being ordinary, in Evie’s opinion. Ordinary was for suckers.

Dead bodies are such trouble,” Evie said with a little sigh, and Mabel had to turn her head away so as not to laugh.

"Promise. Don't misunderstand me-you are quite vexing." He touches his tender jaw. "And you hit like a man. But you didn't cause his illness. That is his doing."

What took you so long?” Will asked when Evie came panting into the room. He and Jericho had assembled a stack of books, which they were tucking into Will’s attaché case. “I walked to Jerusalem for the Bible. I knew you’d want an original,” Evie snapped.

She smiled as sweetly as a show poster for the glorified, all-American Ziegfeld girl just before dumping her second cigarette into Wally’s fresh cup of coffee.

Theta crashed next to them on the thick zebra-skin rug. “I’m embalmed.” “Potted and splificated?” “Ossified to the gills. Time for night-night.

She was too much—for Zenith, Ohio. She’d tried at times to make herself smaller, to fit neatly into the ordered lines of expectation. But somehow, she always managed to say or do something outrageous—she’d accept a dare to climb a flagpole, or make a slightly risqué joke, or go riding in cars with boys—and suddenly she was “that awful O’Neill girl” all over again.

Evie didn’t mind yelling, but she hated feeling judged. It got under her skin and made her feel small and ugly and unfixable.

Feast for the Fisherman, the ultimate emo band. Said to be sold with a complimentary prescription for antidepressants and a free flatiron.

How do you invent a religion?” Evie asked. Will looked over the top of his spectacles. “You say, ‘God told me the following,’ and then wait for people to sign up.

I hear they feed you in Sing Sing,” Evie muttered. “Three squares a day.” “Evangeline,” Will said with a sigh. “Charity begins at home.” “So does mental illness.

Cash or check?” he said cheekily. Even the dullest Ohio girls knew that bit of lingo: Kiss now or kiss later? “Bank’s closed, pal.

Evie was so nervous that she downed her cocktail in two stiff swigs, then refilled her glass. Henry arched an eyebrow. “A pro, I see.” “What else is there to do in Ohio?

Just once I’d like to meet a fella who isn’t a phony. Somebody who doesn’t wanna buy me a fur so he can show me off to his boys.

She hadn’t meant to get trapped in a conversation. That was the trouble with offering help to old people.

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?

The wolf was at the door. His shadow spilled into the room, taking it over.

I’m from the health department. You’ve heard of Typhoid Mary? This fella’s got enough typhoid to start his own colony.

She is the elephant’s eyebrows,” Evie whispered appreciatively. “Those jewels! How her neck must ache.” “That’s why Bayer makes aspirin,” Mabel whispered back, and Evie smiled, knowing that even a socialist wasn’t immune to the dazzle of a movie star.

Next time we see you, you’ll be on trial for some ingenious crime!” Dottie said with a laugh. Evie grinned. “Just as long as they know my name.

I told myself it was the snow—she couldn’t possibly get to Philadelphia on the roads. I told myself a hundred lies. Children do that. It’s amazing the sorts of things you’ll make yourself believe.

Evie replied with an eye-roll. “Do you think you can manage to not steal anything while I’m gone?” “The only thing I’m trying to steal is your heart, doll.” Sam smirked. “You’re not that talented a thief, Sam Lloyd.

She knew what it was to wait for someone who would never come home. She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away.

Hot off the presses, today’s headlines: The love of your life does not approve of my wanton flapper ways,” Evie said in a voice of affected mystery. “Really, Mabesie. You might want to reconsider—he is a bit of a killjoy.

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.

The world is 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 little cave, that's one less fighter on the side of fair.

Did you hear? You are free." Yessss. Choice. It is a fine thing. And I choose to take you back, Most High.

He wanted to hit something or someone. He wanted to burn up the whole world, heal it, and burn it down again.

No one had ever said anything like that to Evie. Her parents always wanted to advise or instruct or command. They were good people, but they needed the world to bend to them, to fit into their order of things. Evie had never really quite fit, and when she tried, she’d just pop back out, like a doll squeezed into a too-small box.

She wished she were as inconsequential as the ghosts in her dreams.

You can’t blame a fella for kissing the prettiest girl in New York, can you, sister?” Sam’s grin was anything but apologetic. Evie brought up her knee quickly and decisively, and he dropped to the floor like a grain sack. “You can’t blame a girl for her quick reflexes now, can you, pal?

The line between faith and fanaticism is a constantly shifting one,” Dr. Poblocki said. “When does belief become justification? When does right become rationale and crusade become crime?

You are absolute angels of the first order. If I were Pope, I’d canonize you.” “The Pope would probably love to turn a cannon on you!

I am creating an atmosphere! Oh, Unc, we’ve finally got bodies in this joint! Paying bodies. We could have a good racket going here.” “I’m not interested in a ‘racket.’ I’m an academic.” “That’s okay, Unc. I won’t hold it against you.

There is nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he's right.

I thought research would be more glamorous, somehow. I'd give the librarian a secret code word and he'd give me the one book I needed and whisper the necessary page numbers. Like a speakeasy. With books.

Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.

He told me that once, in the war, he’d come upon a German soldier in the grass with his insides falling out; he was just lying there in agony. The soldier had looked up at Sergeant Leonard, and even though they didn’t speak the same language, they understood each other with just a look. The German lying on the ground; the American standing over him. He put a bullet in the soldier’s head. He didn’t do it with anger, as an enemy, but as a fellow man, one soldier helping another.

If there was one truth Evie had learned in her short life, it was that forgiveness was easier to seek than permission. She didn’t plan to ask for either one.

In them, she saw the sham of her life laid out like a book, the foolish belief that she, that anyone, could escape the consequences of this world, could flee from death. That was the deceit. The true serpent in the garden.

You have a steady fella?” Sam asked after a bit. “No fella can hold me for long.” Sam gave her a sideways glance. “That a challenge?” “No. A statement of fact.

There is no greater power on this earth than story.” Will paced the length of the room. “People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense—words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions—words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.” Will grabbed the sheaf of newspaper clippings he kept in a stack on his desk. “This, and these”—he gestured to the library’s teeming shelves—“they’re a testament to the country’s rich supernatural history.

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.

She loved attention. It was like a glass of the best champagne—bubbly and intoxicating—and as with champagne, she always wanted more of it. Still, she didn’t want to seem like an easy mark. “If you must know, I’ve come to join a convent,” Evie said, testing him.

Oh, sure. Of course, they say now that we’ve got Freud and the motorcar, God is dead.” “He’s not dead; just very tired.

Hey,” the cabbie yelled. “How’s about a tip?” “You bet-ski,” Evie said, heading toward the old Victorian mansion, her long silk scarf trailing behind her. “Don’t kiss strange men in Penn Station.

Theta blew out another plume of cigarette smoke. “Not interested. Love’s messy, kiddo. Let those other girls get moony-eyed and goofy. Me? I got plans.

Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?" "What's the point of that, Miss?" the waiter said. "Tomorrow morning," Mabel said.

HI. I’m from Arkansas, the cantaloupe state. And tonight, I hope you will hold my melons close to your heart and vote me your Miss Teen Dream.

With each shimmy, the bugle beads on their scandalously revealing costumes swung and shook. It was the sort of display Evie knew her mother would have found appalling—an example of the moral decay of the young generation. It was sexual and dangerous and thrilling, and Evie wanted more of it.

For once, Evie didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t really thought of her uncle as very human. He was more like a textbook who occasionally remembered to put on a tie. But it was clear that he was, indeed, human, with a deep wound named Rotke.

A pair of Blue Noses on the next bench glared their disapproval at Evie’s knee-length dress. Evie decided to give them a real show. She hiked her skirt and, humming jauntily, rolled down her stockings, exposing her legs. It had the desired effect on the Blue Noses, who moved down the platform, clucking about the “disgrace of the young.” She would not miss this place.

She was tired of being told how it was by this generation, who’d botched things so badly. They’d sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. Love your parents. All is fair. And then they’d sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them. Still they lied, expecting her to mouth the words and play along. Well, she wouldn’t. She knew now that the world was a long way from fair. She knew the monsters were real.

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