Libba Bray Quotes (59 Quotes)

Women who have power are always feared.

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.

In every end, there is also a beginning.

There are no safe choices, Miss Temple. Only other choices.

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.

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

There are no safe choices. Only other choices.

I am staring into the hissing face of a cobra. A surprisingly pink tongue slithers in and out of a cruel mouth while an Indian man whose eyes are the blue of blindless inclines his head towards my mother and explains in Hindi that cobras make very good eating.

It's possible to pretend I'm someone other than who I am, and if I pretend long enough, I can believe it.

There are no wrong decisions only diffrent ones.

I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all.

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.

There's a lot about discovering who you are and how difficult that is. And it never stops.

I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I've got to think.

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.

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.

I don't trust her father than I can run full-steam in a corset.

Might. Is there any opiate more powerful than that word?

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.

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.

My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.

Things aren't good or bad in and of themselves. It's what we do with them that makes them so.

And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try.

I know because I read. Might I suggest you try it?

No? Part girl, part wolf? Do they lick their butter knives?

This is how the fire starts. This is how we burn.

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

I refuse to let the past find me here.

One can never go back. One always has to move forward.

Time has no meaning. I feel as if I have been left in the desert to die and am eagerly awaiting the vultures to begin their work and end my misery.

Come on, Father. Stop me. Tell me to behave, to go to hell, something, anything.

I want to ask him if it's possible that a girl can be born unlovable, or does she just become that way?

One could argue that it's romantic to die for love. Of course, then you're dead and unable to take that honeymoon trip to the Alps with all the other fashionable young couples, which is a shame.

Tonight, she went into the woods, and I fear she shall live in the woods of my soul for the rest of my days.

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?

I will never, ever drink whiskey again. From now on, it's strictly sherry.

People see what they want to see when they need to.

Warning: If you are insufferable, do not walk here. We shall eat you down to the marrow.

Even Felicity can't keep from sputtering with laughter. I wish I could use my evil eye. Or at least my evil boot right smack against Cecily's backside.

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.

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

We are all unkind from time to time. 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.

Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't know yet what power feels like. But this is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us.

If you tell them what they want to hear, they don't bother to try to see.

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.

Welcome to finishing school, Gemma. Learn to embroider, serve tea, curtsy. Oh, and by the way, you might be demolished in the night by a hideous winged creature from the roof.

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.

I'm an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.

Sheep. I'm stuck in a boarding school filled with sheep.

What do you feel? I've never been asked this question once. None of us has. We aren't supposed to feel. We're British.