Libba Bray
It is funny how you do not miss affection until it is given, but once it is, it can never be enough; you would drown in it if possible.Collection: Missing
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.Collection: School
Please do not strain yourself, Miss Doyle. I won't have my girls going cross-eyed in the name of art.Collection: Girl
Taylor clapped for attention. “Miss New Mexico, let’s not get all down in the bummer basement where the creepy things live. There are people in heathen China who don’t even have airline trays. We have a lot to be grateful for.Collection: Grateful
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.Collection: Uncles
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Creating
She hadn’t meant to get trapped in a conversation. That was the trouble with offering help to old people.Collection: Offering
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.Collection: Long
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.Collection: Order
When I dream, I dream of him. For several nights now he’s come to me, waving from a distant shore as if he’s been waiting patiently for me to arrive. He doesn’t utter a word, but his smile says everything: I’ve missed you.Collection: Good Night
There is an ancient tribal proverb I once heard in India. It says that before we can see properly we must first shed our tears to clear the way.Collection: Tears
People aren't always what you want them to beCollection: People
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.Collection: Girl
In a world like this one, only the random makes sense.Collection: World
It isn't that we do what we want. It's that we're allowed to want at all.Collection: Want
I can be whatever. You can be whatever. We can be whatever. Whatever, together.Collection: Together
You're special. I'm special. The whole world's special, so don't you forget it. The universe wants us All to be happy, Full of smiles and all that stuff, All that stuff That's happy and smiley. So get happy, happy, happy right now! Get happy, happy, happy right now! Get happy, happy, happy right now!Collection: Special
True affection and love have a purity which shall always prevail over bigotry.Collection: And Love
Sometimes we seek that which we are not yet ready to find.Collection: Sometimes
Who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy?Collection: Crazy
There is no greater power on this earth than story.Collection: Stories
When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt.Collection: Family
I should never be left alone with my mind for too long.Collection: Long
He said to tell you to remember your heart in all things, that it is where your honor and your destiny will be found. Does it mean anything to you?' It is something he would say from time to time-that the eye could be misled, but that the heart was true.Collection: Heart
It is a giggle full of high spirits and merry mischief, proof that we never lose our girlish selves, no matter what sort of women we become.Collection: Self
I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living.Collection: Thinking
In every end, there is also a beginning.Collection: Ends
Writers are also sort of like vultures, but with fewer ethics.Collection: Ethics
But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on.Collection: Moving
Reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all.Collection: Lying
She never utters a sound even when she's crying, and that makes me a little sad. Doesn't seem right. When you cry, people should hear you. The world should stop.Collection: People
What happened to the winner" Adina asked. "She tripped." "And the first runner-up?" Miss Michigan cracked her knuckles. "She tripped, too.Collection: Missing
I wouldn’t expect you to get it, Daisy. You don’t look at anything besides Photoplay—and even then somebody’s gotta explain the pictures to you.” Daisy’s mouth hung open in outrage. “Well, I never!” “Yeah, that’s what you tell all your fellas, but the rest of us aren’t buying it. Go away, now, Daisy. Shoo, little fly!Collection: Going Away
The vicar, whose name is Reverend Waite, leads us in prayers that all begin with 'O Lord' and end with our somehow not being worthy-sinners who have always been sinners and will forever more be sinners until we die. It isn't the most optimistic outlook I've ever heard but we're encouraged to keep trying anyway.Collection: Prayer
And for a moment, I understand that I have friends on this lonely path; that sometimes your place is not something you find, but something you have when you need it.Collection: Lonely
Heaven's brightest and best-loved angel, who was cast out for inspiring a rebellion against God. Having lost Heaven, Lucifer and his rebel angels vowed to continue fighting here on earth." "I don't understand why he had to fight. He was already in heaven." "True. But he wasn't content to serve. He wanted more." "He had all he could ask for, didn't he?" Ann asks. "Exactly." Miss Moore states. "He had to ask. He was dependent upon someone else's whim. It's a terrible thing to have no power of one's own. To be denied.Collection: Angel
How can my ankles and arms be obscene?Collection: Ankles
The key holds the truthCollection: Keys
That's what living in their world is-a big lie. An illusion where everyone looks the other way and pretends that nothing unpleasant exists at all, no goblins of the dark, no ghosts of the soul.Collection: Lying
Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.Collection: Hero
There is a time in every life when paths are chosen, character is forged. I could have chosen a different path. But I didn’t. I failed myself.Collection: Character
The night's chilly breath tickles up my neck and finds my ear, whispering secrets only the wind knows.Collection: Night
We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic.Collection: Magic
Felicity and I watch the dancers moving as one. They spin about like the earth on it's axis, enduring the dark, waiting for the sun.Collection: Moving
No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We’re all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they’d like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance. A fissure forms in the vessel. I’m cracking open.Collection: Girl
I run after her, not really giving chase. I’m running because I can, because I must. Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop.Collection: Life
My cholera's acting up again.Collection: Acting
Do you think they missed him terribly when he fell? Did God cry over his lost angel, I wonder?Collection: Angel