Libba Bray
We're comfortable with women in certain roles but not comfortable with women expressing anger or fully accepting their power. The most daring question a woman can ask is, 'What do I want?'Collection: Anger
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. Florence is still one of my favorite cities in the world.Collection: Romantic
Sitting in my favorite coffeehouse with a new notebook and a hot cup of java is my idea of Heaven.
So much of the literature we had to read for high school English class was filled with victimized, tragic, symbolic women who spurred the plot forward with their inevitable shunning/death/shunning-followed-by-pregnancy-followed-by-death timelines.
Any book that can help you survive the slings and arrows of adolescence is a book to love for life; 'The Catcher in the Rye' did just that, and I still do love it.
We're still expected to color within the lines of accepted femininity, and women who step out of those lines are usually attacked, whether verbally or physically.
It's so daunting to walk into a classroom or a school auditorium. It's like the world's weirdest blind date. I know all the students are thinking, 'Who is this tool standing up in front of us?'
When you live in Brooklyn, if you throw a rock, you'll hit a writer - Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem, Paul Auster.
I'm a techno moron. I need help just to plug in my video camera.
I'm one of those people who has to write. If I don't write, I feel itchy and depressed and cranky. So everybody's glad when I write and stop complaining already.
My dad was a Presbyterian minister. Yes, I am one of those dreaded P.K.s - Preacher's Kids. Be afraid.
I'm related to Davy Crockett on my mom's side. Honest.
I grew up doing theatre and spent a long time as a playwright. I still think very visually when I write.
Naming my favorite books feels like naming a favorite child - impossible.
I love to be scared. Not, 'Hey, I think I smell smoke...' scared, but creepy, paranoid, what's-that-out-there-in-the-dark, ghost story scared. It's no surprise that I was the girl who got invited to the slumber parties because I could be counted on to tell a tale to scare the bejesus out of you.
'Pastoralia' by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book.
'The Catcher in the Rye.' When I was a teenager, that was my book; yes, somebody gets it, somebody gets adolescence.
You know that moment in 'The Matrix' when Neo takes the red pill and is plunged into the real world? That's what it felt like when I first read 'Watchmen' - like someone was taking a can opener to my head to make room for Moore's audacious brilliance.
I was a big reader as a kid, but it was 'Charlotte's Web' that showed me you could feel as if you were actually living inside a book.
My joke is that my father was a minister and my mother was an English teacher, so I'm trained to see the world in terms of symbols, which is hard when you just want to make toast.
And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.Collection: Inspirational
I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.Collection: World
If you tell them what they want to hear, they don't bother to try to see.Collection: Trying
Retribution is a dog chasing its tail.Collection: Dog
I refuse to let the past find me here.Collection: Past
People will believe anything if it means they can go on with their lives and not have to think too hard about it.Collection: Believe
There are no safe choices. Only other choices.Collection: Choices
The hand you hold the longest is your own.Collection: Hands
We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be.Collection: Book
Write like it matters, and it will.Collection: Writing
I love you for who you are, not who the world thinks you should be.Collection: Love You
Maybe that's what real friendship is -- getting so used to people that you need to be annoyed by them.Collection: Real
You couldn't be perfect enough to keep the world from betraying you.Collection: Perfect
Jeez, someone needs to push the reset button on this planet.Collection: Reset Button
I know because I read...Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.Collection: Garden
To those who will see, the world waits.Collection: Waiting
I'm sorry, Gemma. But we can't live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you.Collection: Sorry
Men have feelings too, you know. You bruise the petals of my manflower.Collection: Men
What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?Collection: Struggle
The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance.Collection: Dream
Libraries are the torch of the world, illuminating the path when it feels too dark to see. We mustn't allow that torch to be extinguished.Collection: Dark
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.Collection: Space
Her eyes take on that suspicious, wounded look girls get when they know they've fallen off the top rung of friendship and someone else has passed them, but they don't know when or how the change took place.Collection: Girl
There are times when one friend requires the blind faith of another.Collection: Blind
There’s a moment of profound sadness that can be dispelled only by summoning my anger.Collection: Sadness
And when it comes, her kiss is like something not so much felt as found.Collection: Kissing
We are English, and I expect you to behave as such. No more crying.Collection: Cry
Gonzo narrows his eyes. 'How often do you clean that thing?' 'Every night,' the waitress answers. Her smile is strained. 'That's it? Do you know how long it takes for Listeria to grow under those hot lamps, even with ice?' Here we go. 'It can happen in just five hours. Five hours and you've got the salad bar of death!' The waitress looks confused. 'From Listerine?Collection: Confused
J.T Woodland, known as “the cute one” in The Corporation’s seventh-grade boy band, Boyz Will B Boyz. Due to the success of their triple-platinum hit, “Let Me Shave Your Legs Tonight, Girl,” Boyz Will B Boyz ruled the charts for a solid eleven months before hitting puberty and losing ground to Hot Vampire Boyz.Collection: Cute
As one, they leap, laughing, and that is where we leave them - mouths open, arms spread wide, fingers splayed to take in the whole world, bodies flying high in defiance of gravity, as if they will never fall.Collection: Fall