I'm cracking open.

All quotes by author Libba Bray

please. we know. 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.

- going bovine

you can never know about your own destiny: are the people you meet there to play a part in your own destiny, or do you exist just to play a role in theirs?

- going bovine

prepared to fly, even if she has to lose her legs to do it.

i’m like everyone else in this stupid, bloody, amazing world. i’m flawed. impossibly so. but hopeful. i’m still me.

- the sweet far thing

and yet, you’re still alone. all that trying and still you stand apart, watching from the other side of the glass. afraid to have what you truly want because what if it’s not enough after all? so much better to wrap yourself up in the longing. the yearning. the restlessness.

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.

- the sweet far thing

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.

- a great and terrible beauty

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.

- the sweet far thing

it’s strange how deliberate people are after a death. all the indecision suddenly vanishes into clear, defined moments—changing the linens, choosing a dress or a hymn, the washing up, the muttering of prayers. all the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day.

i can’t make a sound. i only nod. 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 is never any turning back. you have to go forward. make the future yours.

we are all unkind from time to time. we all do things we desperately wish we could undo. those things just become a part of who we are, along with everything else. to spend time trying to change that, well it’s just like chasing clouds.

- a great and terrible beauty

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.

instead, i try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, because it is morning; it is morning and there is so much to see.

- the sweet far thing

but forgiveness… i’ll hold on to that fragile slice of hope and keep it close, remembering that 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

- rebel angels

‘do you ever feel that way?’ ‘lonely?’ i search for the words. ‘restless. as if you haven’t really met yourself yet. as if you’d passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt—‘ah! there i am! i’ve been missing that piece!’ but it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. and you spend the rest of your days looking for it.’ he nods, and i think he’s appeasing me. i feel stupid of having said it. it’s sentimental and true, and i’ve revealed a part of myself i shouldn’t have. ‘do you know what i think?’ kartik says at last. ‘what?’ ‘sometimes, i think you can glimpse it in another.’

- the sweet far thing

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.

- a great and terrible beauty

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.

- a great and terrible beauty