Libba Bray
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.Collection: Boys
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.Collection: Short Life
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.Collection: Girl
I invited myself. Thought this table needed some class.Collection: Class
Agent Jones switched to the big screen and a grainy video of MoMo sitting at his enormous desk, a swivel-hipped Elvis clock ticking behind his bewigged head. 'Death to the capitalist pigs! Death to your cinnamon bun-smelling malls! Death to your power walking and automatic car windows and I'm With Stupid T-shirts! The Republic of ChaCha will never bend to your side-of-fries -drive -through-please-oh-would-you-like-ketchup-with-that corruption! MoMo B. ChaCha defies you and all you stand for, and one day, you will crumble into the sea and we will pick up the pieces and make them into sand art.Collection: Art
Might. Is there any opiate more powerful than that word?Collection: Powerful
In school, they would tell you that life wouldn’t come to you; you had to go out and make it your own. But when it came to love, the message for girls seemed to be this: Don’t. Don’t go after what you want. Wait. Wait to be chosen, as if only in the eye of another could one truly find value. The message was confusing and infuriating. It was a shell game with no actual pea under the rapidly moving cups.Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Hipster
Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?" "What's the point of that, Miss?" the waiter said. "Tomorrow morning," Mabel said.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Moving
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.Collection: Book
There is nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he's right.Collection: Believe
I'm just saying it's not all sand castles and ninjas.Collection: Castles
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.Collection: Ashes
The world is a lie...not you and me.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Hurt
My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.Collection: Epidemics
The face staring back at me isn't beautiful but she isn't something that would scare the horses, either.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Care
I am dying a thousand cruel and unusual deaths as fifty pairs of eyes take me in, size me up like something that should be hanging over a fireplace in a gentleman's den.Collection: Eye
No? Part girl, part wolf? Do they lick their butter knives?Collection: Girl
When the music is over, she keeps her head down till she finds her seat again, and I wonder how many times each day she dies a little.Collection: Each Day
How I'd love to get away from here and be someone else for a while in a place where no one knows or expects certain things from me.Collection: Certain
Warning: If you are insufferable, do not walk here. We shall eat you down to the marrow.Collection: Warning
Tonight, she went into the woods, and I fear she shall live in the woods of my soul for the rest of my days.Collection: Soul
It's possible to pretend I'm someone other than who I am, and if I pretend long enough, I can believe it.Collection: Believe
He plants his feet stubbornly, adopting what he must think is an heroic post. He's just begging for a pigeon to fly by and relieve itself.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Done
We're all damaged somehow."-A Great and Terrible BeautyCollection: Terrible
The sun has blessed you," Sarita used to say. "Look how he has left his kisses on your face for all to see and be jealous." "The sun loves you more," I said, rubbing my hands over her dry arms, the color of an aged wine gourd, and she laughed. But this is not India and we are not prized for our freckles here. The sun is not allowed to show his love.Collection: Blessed
I had thought Felicity dangerous a moment ago, when she felt powerful. I was wrong. Wounded and powerless, she is more dangerous than I could imagine.Collection: Powerful
Around us the night creatures have their say. We are surrounded by a symphony of crickets and frogs. Neither of us feels the need to speak, and I suppose that is one of the qualities I find comforting in Kartik. We can be alone together.Collection: Night
I am no longer content to be the scared, obedient schoolgirl. Who are you, a stranger, to tell me what I can and cannot do?Collection: Scared
Eve didn't choose to eat the apple. She was tempted by the serpent." "Yes," I argue, thoughts coming out half-formed. "But...she didn't have to take a bite. She chose to.Collection: Apples
All things are possible.Collection: Wall
When I dream, I dream of him.Collection: Dream
We've barley stepped into the bright glow of the realms when everything goes dark.Collection: Dark
You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it.Collection: Believe
I feel like I swallowed a Magritte. Like on the inside, I'm made of clouds and floating eyes, green apples, and slowly rising men in bowler hats.Collection: Eye
My personal motto is: WWWWD?: What Would Wonder Woman Do?Collection: Wonder Woman
Im a techno moron. I need help just to plug in my video camera.Collection: Cameras
It occurs to me that cricket is not the true sport in London - gossip is.Collection: Sports
Life don’t come to you, Memphis. You gotta take it. We have to take it. Because ain’t nobody handing it to us.Collection: Memphis
Any librarian or scholar will tell you: Close is not the same as accurate.Collection: Librarian
Books are, at their heart, dangerous. Yes, dangerous. Because they challenge us: our prejudices, our blind spots. They open us to new ideas, new ways of seeing. They make us hurt in all the right ways. They can push down the barricades of ‘them’ & widen the circle of ‘us.Collection: Hurt
In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We’ve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.Collection: Art
A guy's gotta live, you know, gotta make his way and find his meaning in life and love, and to do that he needs coffee, he needs coffee and coffee and coffee.Collection: Life And Love
People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense-words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions-words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. HistoryCollection: Lying