Marie Lu · 38 pages
Rating: (15K votes)
“Keep at it, Junebug—someday, you’ll shake the Republic to its very core. You’ll be absolutely unforgettable. I know it.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“When you’ve been poor all your life, you never really think it could be any other way. And sometimes you’re even happy, because at least you’ve got your family and your health and your arms and legs and a roof over your head.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“The things that make you special will give you all kinds of advantages in life, but they will also hold you back and expose your weaknesses.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“Everything good about me, I learned from you,” I whisper. “You’re giving me too much credit. We got it from our parents.” Metias chuckles a little. It’s a sad sound. There’s another long, ten-second pause before he goes on. “You’ll find your tribe,” he says. “We all do. Someday, someone out there will see you for the girl you really are. Someday, you’ll find someone who understands you.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“At least you understand me.” He raises an eyebrow again. “Sometimes.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“I bet the Republic hasn't seen the last of you.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“Someday, someone out there will see you for the girl you really are. Someday, you’ll find someone who understands you.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“Poor Metias. He’s not supposed to be a father. He’s supposed to be out on his own, independent and free to concentrate on his job as a young captain. But somebody has to take care of me, and I make his life so much harder than it needs to be. I wonder what things must have been like for him back when our parents were still alive, when I was a toddler and Metias was a teenager and he could focus on growing up instead of helping someone else grow up. Still, Metias hasn’t complained once. Not a single time. And even though I wish our parents were here, sometimes I’m really happy that this is our little family unit, just me and my brother, each watching out for no one but the other. We do the best we can.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“My brother reaches out and taps my forehead gently. "Behind that brain of yours is a good heart, Junebug. I see it every day.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the great Republic of America, to our Elector Primo, to our glorious states, to unity against the Colonies, to our impending victory!”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“Ugh,” I snort in disgust. No doubt that girl’s some goddy rich trot living the sweet life farther inland, in one of LA’s upper-class sectors. Who cares what she scored on her Trial? The whole test is rigged in favor of the wealthy kids, anyway, and she’s probably just someone with average smarts who bought her high score.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“Thank you,” she says. “You’re a good kid. I bet the Republic hasn’t seen the last of you.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“Love you too. Keep at it, Junebug—someday, you’ll shake the Republic to its very core. You’ll be absolutely unforgettable. I know it.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“TWELVE-YEAR-OLD TRIAL PRODIGY JUNE IPARIS BECOMES YOUNGEST STUDENT EVER ADMITTED TO DRAKE UNIVERSITY, TO BE OFFICIALLY INDUCTED NEXT WEEK.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“Your strengths might make you hard to approach, and might make your words sound uglier than what you actually mean, but they also make people look up to you.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
“WHAT’S WITH ALL THIS TRAFFIC?” I ASK MY BROTHER. Metias leans forward in the driver’s seat and cranes his neck.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Life Before Legend: Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy
Marie Lu
Born place: in Wuxi, China
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“Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother's jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud. Bus number twelve is her favorite place for watching, inside and out. The bus passes cars and bicycles and people walking dogs. It passes store windows, and every so often Minna sees her face reflection, two dark eyes in a face as pale as a winter dawn. There are fourteen people on the bus today. Minna stands up to count them. She likes to count people, telephone poles, hats, umbrellas, and, lately, earrings. One girl, sitting directly in front of Minna, has seven earrings, five in one ear. She has wisps of dyed green hair that lie like forsythia buds against her neck.
There are, Minna knows, a king, a past president of the United States, and a beauty queen on the bus. Minna can tell by looking. The king yawns and scratches his ear with his little finger. Scratches, not picks. The beauty queen sleeps, her mouth open, her hair the color of tomatoes not yet ripe. The past preside of the United States reads Teen Love and Body Builder's Annual.
Next to Minna, leaning against the seat, is her cello in its zippered canvas case. Next to her cello is her younger brother, McGrew, who is humming. McGrew always hums. Sometimes he hums sentences, though most often it comes out like singing. McGrew's teachers do not enjoy McGrew answering questions in hums or song. Neither does the school principal, Mr. Ripley. McGrew spends lots of time sitting on the bench outside Mr. Ripley's office, humming.
Today McGrew is humming the newspaper. First the headlines, then the sports section, then the comics. McGrew only laughs at the headlines.
Minna smiles at her brother. He is small and stocky and compact like a suitcase. Minna loves him. McGrew always tells the truth, even when he shouldn't. He is kind. And he lends Minna money from the coffee jar he keeps beneath his mattress.
Minna looks out the bus window and thinks about her life. Her one life. She likes artichokes and blue fingernail polish and Mozart played too fast. She loves baseball, and the month of March because no one else much likes March, and every shade of brown she has ever seen. But this is only one life. Someday, she knows, she will have another life. A better one. McGrew knows this, too. McGrew is ten years old. He knows nearly everything. He knows, for instance, that his older sister, Minna Pratt, age eleven, is sitting patiently next to her cello waiting to be a woman.”
― Patricia MacLachlan, quote from The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt
“Why one human being is attracted to another is one of the great mysteries of the world.”
― Claire Cook, quote from Must Love Dogs
“Borders. Tresholds. Doorways. Windows. Neither inside nor out. Not one thing any longer, but not yet another. The in between.
Order fails, and ghosts come in.”
― Andra Brynn, quote from Where I End and You Begin
“An alcoholic. Amy stopped pushing her thumb against the dashboard. His mother had not been baking cookies. Probably she had been upstairs drinking gin from a bottle stored under the bed. Amy didn’t have a clear idea of what a woman alcoholic (a mother alcoholic) would be like, but her own mother had told her once that such women got very sneaky, hiding bottles under their bed.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“Love's empire is this globe and all mankind; the most refined and the most degraded, the cleverest and the most stupid, are all liable to become his faithful subjects. He can alike command the devotion of an archbishop and a South-Sea Islander, of the most immaculate maiden lady (whatever her age) and of the savage Zulu girl. From the pole to the equator, and from the equator to the further pole, there is no monarch like Love.”
― H. Rider Haggard, quote from Dawn
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