110+ Libba Bray Quotes On Beauty, Friendship And Education

Libba Bray is an American author of young adult fiction. She is best known for her Gemma Doyle trilogy, The Diviners series, and A Great and Terrible Beauty. Her books often feature strong female protagonists and explore themes of identity, feminism, and social issues. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Libba Bray on love, beauty, friendship.

Top 10 Libba Bray Quotes

1. People aren't always what you want them to be
2. Free the snow globes!
3. And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.
4. It's always darkest before the ultimate sparkle.
5. Do not be tempted by English roses. Their beauty fades, but their thorns are forever.
6. 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.
7. There's a lot about discovering who you are and how difficult that is. And it never stops.
8. Jeez, someone needs to push the reset button on this planet.
9. I thought I was having an existential crisis, but it was nothing. Please don't tailgate: body in trunk.
10. We've barley stepped into the bright glow of the realms when everything goes dark.

Libba Bray Short Quotes

• Writers are also sort of like vultures, but with fewer ethics.
• I should never be left alone with my mind for too long.
• I know because I read...Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.
• Because there's nothing wrong with you... that can't be fixed.
• Sometimes we seek that which we are not yet ready to find.
• Really, being a librarian is a much more dangerous job than you realize.
• There is no greater power on this earth than story.
• Judge not, lest ye be judged.
• Did God ever cry over his lost angel, I wonder?
• I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I've got to think.

Libba Bray Quotes About Love

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. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

What --- you don't believe in true love?" Petra asked. "The kind that can then be parlayed into awesome merchandising opportunities?" - "Beauty Queens — Libba Bray

When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Wow, you're awesome and The universe loves a winner, so the universe must really love you! — Libba Bray

Oh, I've a love, a true, true love, who waits upon yon shore... and if my love won't be my love, then I will live no more. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

People tend to think that hate is the most dangerous emotion. But love is equally dangerous,” Will said. “There are many stories of spirits haunting the places and people who meant the most to them. In fact, there are more of those than there are revenge stories. — Libba Bray

They kept the lie going, and the people loved it. — Libba Bray

Libba Bray Quotes About Beauty

But aren't many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect?...aren't the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned? — Libba Bray

When you peeled back the skin, you were dealing with bone and muscle, blood and nerve endings. It was all the same. She liked the beautiful logic of the circulatory system, the elegance of the neurological, and the fierce warrior spirit of the heart. The body had rules and it had quirks. — Libba Bray

- So my own sister will not promote me? Speaking of which, weren't you supposed to find me a beautiful future wife with a small fortune? Have you had any success on that front? - Yes - I have warned them all. — Libba Bray

She's no beauty, mate — Libba Bray

I don't know. Sometimes, I feel nothing, and I'm so afraid. Afraid I'll stop feeling anything at all. I'll just slip away inside myself...I just need to feel something" A Great and Terrible Beauty, Page 177, by — Libba Bray

Jericho lay back down on his side, watching her breathe just an arm's length from him. She was not beautiful while she slept; her mouth hung open and she snored very lightly, and this, despite everything that had happened, made him smile. — Libba Bray

Beauty, grace, and charm my foot. It's a school for sadists with good tea-serving skills. — Libba Bray

The face staring back at me isn't beautiful but she isn't something that would scare the horses, either. — Libba Bray

This is going to make such a great story: How I nursed a pirate back to health and my love saved him," Miss Ohio said with a contented sigh. "And then we can have our own reality show about our relationship." - "Beauty Queens — Libba Bray

You are unique, and this is a beautiful, beautiful thing, grasshopper. — Libba Bray

Libba Bray Quotes About Illusion

You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it. — Libba Bray

Because you can't keep up the illusion forever," I say. "No one has that much magic. — Libba Bray

The rules of magic, my dear, are best not discusses. For once we understand the illusion, we no longer believe it. — Libba Bray

War." Gorgon spits the word. "That is what they call it to give the illusion of honor and law. It is chaos. Madness and blood and the hunger to win. It has always been thus and shall always be so. — Libba Bray

We create the illusions we need to go on. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Libba Bray Quotes About People

The mere suggestion of fame and fortune casts a glamour all its own. It is rather alarming how quickly people will turn someone else's fiction into fact in order to support their own fictions of themselves. — Libba Bray

People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept. — Libba Bray

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? — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

People always fear what they don't understand, Evangeline. History proves that. — Libba Bray

People will believe anything if it means they can go on with their lives and not have to think too hard about it. — Libba Bray

People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense-words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions-words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History — Libba Bray

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

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. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Libba Bray Quotes About Choice

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? — Libba Bray

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice... No one can live in the light all the time. — Libba Bray

There are no safe choices. Only other choices. — Libba Bray

There are times when I wish I could go back and change the course of my life. Make different choices...But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on. Do you remember that I told you that at Spence? — Libba Bray

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

But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on. — Libba Bray

What happens if your choice is misguided, You must try to correct it But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t? Then you must find a way to live with it. — Libba Bray

Libba Bray Quotes About Balance

There is a dualism inherent in democracy--opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balance takes a great deal of energy. — Libba Bray

No person has ever held all the power. There must be a balance between chaos and order, dark and light. With the Temple magic bound to you, the realms are no longer in balance. The power could change you... and you could change the magic. — Libba Bray

You can never really know someone completely. That’s why it’s the most terrifying thing in the world, really—taking someone on faith, hoping they’ll take you on faith too. It’s such a precarious balance, It’s a wonder we do it at all. And yet.. — Libba Bray

Libba Bray Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. -Going Bovine — Libba Bray

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? — Libba Bray

Beneath the skin, there is fear. Pain. Remorse. Yearning. Desire. A fierce longing for power. All of this. We are joined. It is as if we live in the center of a great storm. Around us the world of the realms revolves like a giant kaleidoscope, images refracted again and again. So many worlds! So much to know. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Can we really conquer chaos so easily? If that were so, I should be able to prune the pandemonium of my own soul into something neat and tidy rather than this maze of wants and needs and misgivings that has me forever feeling as if I cannot fit into the landscape of things. — Libba Bray

Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended to with vigilance, else it dies out. — Libba Bray

I'm like everyone else in this stupid, bloody, amazing world. I'm flawed. Impossibly so. But hopeful. I'm still me. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Reality is a state of mind. To the banker, the money in his ledger book is all very real, though he doesn't actually see it or touch it. But to the Brahma, it simply doesn't exist the way the air and the earth, pain and loss do. To him, the banker's reality is folly. To the banker, the Brahma's ideas are as inconsequential as dust. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

I will tell you the story of how we found ourselves in a realm where dreams are formed, destiny is chosen, and magic is as real as a handprint in the snow. — Libba Bray

May I suggest that you all read? And often. Believe me, it's nice to have something to talk about other than the weather and the Queen's health. Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right. — Libba Bray

I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment. — Libba Bray

What happened to the winner" Adina asked. "She tripped." "And the first runner-up?" Miss Michigan cracked her knuckles. "She tripped, too. — Libba Bray

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

The night's chilly breath tickles up my neck and finds my ear, whispering secrets only the wind knows. — Libba Bray

Please do not strain yourself, Miss Doyle. I won't have my girls going cross-eyed in the name of art. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds. — Libba Bray

I've heard it said that God is in the details. It's the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

The dull pain of truth weights my soul, pulling it under. I am left hopelessly awake. — Libba Bray

But if we are to remain a great empire, we must have a greater understanding of the hearts and minds of others. — Libba Bray

The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World. I'm sixteen now, so you can imagine that's left me with quite a few days of major suckage. — Libba Bray

In a world like this one, only the random makes sense. — Libba Bray

The dark does not weep for itself because there is no light. Rather, it accepts that it is the dark. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Will was making a speech, something about having been young and careless once, the sort of thing old-timers said when they issued a deathblow, as if they thought their sanctimonious ramblings disguised as empathy would be welcomed, but Evie was only half listening. — Libba Bray

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! — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

On the Bowery, in the ornate carcass of a formerly grand vaudeville theater, a dance marathon limps along. The contestants, young girls and their fellas, hold one another up, determined to make their mark, to bite back at the dreams sold to them in newspaper advertisements and on the radio. They have sores on their feet but stars in their eyes. — Libba Bray

The man in the shop peered disapprovingly at Evie through the glass. She pumped her arms and legs up and down in imitation of a marching band, gave the man a salute, and continued her meandering walk to the museum. — 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?' — Libba Bray

You're quite tall.' Just what a girl wants to be reminded of. — Libba Bray

No one can live in the light all the time. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

This is how the fire starts. This is how we burn. — Libba Bray

Im a techno moron. I need help just to plug in my video camera. — Libba Bray

It isn't that we do what we want. It's that we're allowed to want at all. — Libba Bray

Didn't you have any sadistic nannies who told you these tales to keep you quiet and well behaved at night? Heavens, what's to become of the Empire if governesses have lost their touch for scaring the wits out of their girls? — Libba Bray

Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains. — Libba Bray

But sons are a different matter to a man. More a duty than an indulgence. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

I changed the world; the world changed me. Everything you do comes back to you. When you affect a situation, you are also affected. — Libba Bray

He smiles sadly. "Now I know my destiny." "What is it?" "This." He draws me in to him in a kiss. His lips are warm. He pulls me tighter in his embrace. The roots sigh and release their hold on my waist and the wound in my side is healed. "Kartik," I cry, kissing his cheeks. "It's let me go." "That's good," he says. He makes a small cry. His back arches, and every muscle in his body tightens. — Libba Bray

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 bend down and trail delicate fingers across my cold cheeks. — Libba Bray

Everyone seems to want more form me. I am a thoroughly disappointing girl around. I shall wear a scarlet 'D' upon my bosom for all to see so that they will know not to raise their expectations. — Libba Bray

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 — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Everything is randomly connected. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

In this man’s smile was all the unfairness of the world in its thuggish seduction. “Just come with me. We’ll take care of you.” “No, you won’t.” Taylor stroked the man’s cheek. She reached her arms up to cradle the back of his head and, with the skill of a champion, she broke his neck. Then she dragged him into the bushes, took his gun and walkie-talkie, and kept moving. — Libba Bray

Why does everyone want to own me?" Pippa mumbles. She's got her head in her hands. "Why do they all want to control my life -- how I look, whom I see, what I do or don't do? Why can't they just let me alone?" "Because you're beautiful," Ann answers, watching the fire lick her palm. "People always think they can own beautiful things. — Libba Bray

It's knowing 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. — Libba Bray

It's as if I've inherited a skin I cannot quite fit, and so I walk about constantly pulling and and tugging, pinning and pruning, trying desperately to fill it out, hoping that no one will look at me struggling and say, 'That one there- she's a fraud, Look how she doesn't fit at all. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy? — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Just because you're funny doesn't mean you get to be cruel. — Libba Bray

So, now I've been to see a drug counselor who told me I need to lay off the drugs and talk about my feelings, and a shrink who heard what I had to say and immediately put me on drugs. — Libba Bray

They have money and position and Ann has none.It's amazing how often you can be right as long as you have those two things working in your favor. — Libba Bray

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. — Libba Bray

Maybe that's what real friendship is -- getting so used to people that you need to be annoyed by them. — Libba Bray

My dad was a Presbyterian minister. Yes, I am one of those dreaded P.K.s - Preachers Kids. Be afraid. — Libba Bray

They don't know what they're in for at Spence, getting me, a ghost of a girl who'll nod and smile and take her tea but who isn't really here. — Libba Bray

In a world beyond this one, that river goes on singing sweetly, enchanting us with what we want to hear, shaping what we need to see in order to keep going. In those waters, all disappointments are forgotten, our mistakes forgiven. Gazing into them, we see a strong father. A loving mother. Warm rooms where we are sheltered, adored, wanted. And the uncertainty of our futures is nothing more than the fog of breath on a windowpane. — Libba Bray

It was a kiss small in its ministrations but epic in its feeling. — Libba Bray

Gemma~Was he really looking at me that way? Kartik~What way? Gemma~Like a piece of ripe fruit? Katrik~You'd best be on your guard with him. — Libba Bray

Oh, hello," Dr. M says, shaking Balder's hand. "Wonderful costume. I'm a bit of a role player myself on the weekends. Tell me, where did you get the helmet?" It was forged in the North, blessed by the hands of Odin, given to me by my mother, Frigg," Balder answers. Lovely. I got mine on the Internet. — Libba Bray

Life Lessons by Libba Bray

1. Libba Bray's work teaches us to be brave and take risks in order to pursue our dreams and passions. She also encourages us to be open-minded and to think outside the box in order to find creative solutions to problems. Lastly, her stories emphasize the importance of friendship and community, and how working together can help us overcome any obstacle.