Libba Bray - The Diviners (2012)

58 Sourced Quotes

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Just once, she'd like to be the exciting one, the girl somebody wanted.

Libba Bray
She wished she were as inconsequential as the ghosts in her dreams.

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

Libba Bray
He wanted to hit something or someone. He wanted to burn up the whole world, heal it, and burn it down again.

Libba Bray
Oh, sure. Of course, they say now that we've got Freud and the motorcar, God is dead. He's not dead; just very tired.

Libba Bray
There were few things worse than being ordinary, in Evie's opinion. Ordinary was for suckers.

Libba Bray
You are absolute angels of the first order. If I were Pope, I'd canonize you. The Pope would probably love to turn a cannon on you!

Libba Bray
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
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
The police have asked for my help. There's been a murder." "A murder! Oh, my. Let me just change my shoes," Evie said excitedly. "It won't be a minute.

Libba Bray
I told myself it was the snow—she couldn't possibly get to Philadelphia on the roads. I told myself a hundred lies. Children do that. It's amazing the sorts of things you'll make yourself believe.

Libba Bray
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
His eyes were narrow and black, his nose sharp, and his lips thin as a new thought.

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

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
When the world moves forward too fast for some people, they try to pull us all back with their fear.

Libba Bray
I wouldn't expect you to get it, Daisy. You don't look at anything besides Photoplay—and even then somebody's gotta explain the pictures to you. Daisy's mouth hung open in outrage. Well, I never! Yeah, that's what you tell all your fellas, but the rest of us aren't buying it. Go away, now, Daisy. Shoo, little fly!

Libba Bray
Why does anyone do anything? Belief. A belief that they are right and just in their actions. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, because he believed that God had commanded it. To kill your son is unthinkable. A crime. But if you are acting in the belief that your God, your supreme deity whom you must obey, has demanded it of you, is it still a crime?

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
She was too much—for Zenith, Ohio. She'd tried at times to make herself smaller, to fit neatly into the ordered lines of expectation. But somehow, she always managed to say or do something outrageous—she'd accept a dare to climb a flagpole, or make a slightly risqué joke, or go riding in cars with boys—and suddenly she was that awful O'Neill girl all over again.

Libba Bray
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
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
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
Any librarian or scholar will tell you: Close is not the same as accurate.

Libba Bray
In them, she saw the sham of her life laid out like a book, the foolish belief that she, that anyone, could escape the consequences of this world, could flee from death. That was the deceit. The true serpent in the garden.

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
Just once I'd like to meet a fella who isn't a phony. Somebody who doesn't wanna buy me a fur so he can show me off to his boys.

Libba Bray