“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, quote from The Diviners
“Some mornings, she’d wake and vow, Today, I will get it right. I won’t be such an awful mess of a girl. I won’t lose my temper or make unkind remarks. I won’t go too far with a joke and feel the room go quiet with disapproval. I’ll be good and kind and sensible and patient. The sort everyone loves. But by evening, her good intentions would have unraveled. She’d say the wrong thing or talk a little too loudly. She’d take a dare she shouldn’t, just to be noticed. Perhaps Mabel was right, and she was selfish. But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all? “Oh, Evie, you’re too much,” people said, and it wasn’t complimentary. Yes, she was too much. She felt like too much inside all the time. So why wasn’t she ever enough?”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“There is nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he's right.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“There is a hideous invention called the Dewey Decimal System. And you have to look up your topic in books and newspapers. Pages upon pages upon pages…”
Uncle Will frowned. “Didn’t they teach you how to go about research in that school of yours?”
“No. But I can recite ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ while making martinis.”
“I weep for the future.”
“There’s where the martinis come in.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“Your mother and I do not approve of drinking. Have you not heard of the Eighteenth Amendment?”
“Prohibition? I drink to its health whenever I can.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all?”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“There is no greater power on this earth than story.” Will paced the length of the room. “People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense—words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions—words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.” Will grabbed the sheaf of newspaper clippings he kept in a stack on his desk. “This, and these”—he gestured to the library’s teeming shelves—“they’re a testament to the country’s rich supernatural history.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“I salute your spunk, but I question your sanity,” Sam said.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“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, quote from The Diviners
“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, quote from The Diviners
“I thought research would be more glamorous, somehow. I'd give the librarian a secret code word and he'd give me the one book I needed and whisper the necessary page numbers. Like a speakeasy. With books.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“You can’t blame a fella for kissing the prettiest girl in New York, can you, sister?” Sam’s grin was anything but apologetic.
Evie brought up her knee quickly and decisively, and he dropped to the floor like a grain sack. “You can’t blame a girl for her quick reflexes now, can you, pal?”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“Any librarian or scholar will tell you: Close is not the same as accurate.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“Evie replied with an eye-roll. “Do you think you can manage to not steal anything while I’m gone?”
“The only thing I’m trying to steal is your heart, doll.” Sam smirked.
“You’re not that talented a thief, Sam Lloyd.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“She was tired of being told how it was by this generation, who’d botched things so badly. They’d sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. Love your parents. All is fair. And then they’d sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them. Still they lied, expecting her to mouth the words and play along. Well, she wouldn’t. She knew now that the world was a long way from fair. She knew the monsters were real.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“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, quote from The Diviners
“I’m not interested in being polite. It’s false.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense-words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions-words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“People always fear what they don't understand, Evangeline. History proves that.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“There were few things worse than being ordinary, in Evie’s opinion. Ordinary was for suckers.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“Hey,” the cabbie yelled. “How’s about a tip?”
“You bet-ski,” Evie said, heading toward the old Victorian mansion, her long silk scarf trailing behind her. “Don’t kiss strange men in Penn Station.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“What took you so long?” Will asked when Evie came panting into the room. He and Jericho had assembled a stack of books, which they were tucking into Will’s attaché case.
“I walked to Jerusalem for the Bible. I knew you’d want an original,” Evie snapped.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“There is no greater power on this earth than story.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“Life don’t come to you, Memphis. You gotta take it. We have to take it. Because ain’t nobody handing it to us.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“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, quote from The Diviners
“Cash or check?” he said cheekily. Even the dullest Ohio girls knew that bit of lingo: Kiss now or kiss later?
“Bank’s closed, pal.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“I'm a librarian, not an oracle.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“Evie didn’t mind yelling, but she hated feeling judged. It got under her skin and made her feel small and ugly and unfixable.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
“I am starting a collection of only right-hand gloves. It’s ever so bourgeois to have two.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Diviners
Libba Bray
Born place: in Montgomery, Alabama, The United States
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“We became friends, I suppose, because we lived close to each other and it suited us and because when you are young friendships go unquestioned.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from A Gathering Light
“If you in fact had no gold, then your situation was hopeless. You would be beaten, burned, tortured, and steamed to the point of death or until they finally came to believe you. But if you had gold, you could determine the extent of your torture, the limits of your endurance, and your own fate. Psychologically, this situation was, incidentally, not easier but more difficult, because if you made an error
you would always be ridden by a guilty conscience. Of course, anyone who had already mastered the rules of the institution would yield and give up his gold—that was easier. But it was a mistake to give it up too readily. They would refuse to believe you had coughed it all up, and they would continue to hold you. But you'd be wrong, too, to wait too long before yielding: you'd end up kicking the bucket or they'd paste a term on you out of meanness. One of the Tatar draymen endured all the tortures: he had no gold! They imprisoned his wife, too, and tortured her, but the Tatar stuck to his story: no gold! Then they arrested his daughter: the Tatar couldn't take it any more. He coughed up 100,000 rubles. At this point they let his family go, but slapped a prison term on him.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quote from The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1
“Robin didn't like that idea very much-Jules spending time with Adam? "I get jealousy too, you know. You used to be in love with him."
Jules turned his head to look at him. "That was before I knew what love really was". He smiled. "When I met you, Robin, God.... I had to redefine everything. You know, there was this country song my mother really liked. It used to annoy me, I was in my technopop phase, but lately I just... I find myself thinking about the lyrics all the time. That was a river, this is the ocean.... I thought I loved Adam, and I did, but... it wasn't even close to this incredible ocean that I feel for you".”
― Suzanne Brockmann, quote from All Through the Night
“If God permits virtue to be persecuted on earth, it is not for us to question his intentions. It may be that his rewards are held over for another life, for is it not true as written in Holy Scripture that the Lord chastenenth only the righteous! And after all, is not virtue it's own reward?”
― Marquis de Sade, quote from Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings
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Tell the Wolves I'm...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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