Lucia > Lucia's Quotes

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can every quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as though she were the one to say them first. He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“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. We’ve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.”
― Libba Bray

“I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“There are no safe choices. Only other choices.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?”
― Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

“Sometimes we seek that which we are not yet ready to find.”
― Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

“I run after her, not really giving chase. I’m running because I can, because I must.
Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“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.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“I'm like everyone else in this stupid, bloody, amazing world. I'm flawed. Impossibly so. But hopeful. I'm still me.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“I wish to live for myself. I should never want to be trapped.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“The trouble with morning is that it comes well before noon.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“But aren't many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect?...aren't the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned?”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“Why is it that some secrets can drown you while some pull you close to others in a way you never want to lose?”
― Libba Bray

“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.”
― Libba Bray

“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.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Heaven's brightest and best-loved angel, who was cast out for inspiring a rebellion against God. Having lost Heaven, Lucifer and his rebel angels vowed to continue fighting here on earth."
"I don't understand why he had to fight. He was already in heaven."
"True. But he wasn't content to serve. He wanted more."
"He had all he could ask for, didn't he?" Ann asks.
"Exactly." Miss Moore states. "He had to ask. He was dependent upon someone else's whim. It's a terrible thing to have no power of one's own. To be denied.”
― Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

“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.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage, for that matter.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“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.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable,
Is that which rages in the place of dearest love.”
― Euripides, Medea and Other Plays

“Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.”
― Euripides, Medea and Other Plays

“But the future must be met, however stern and iron it be. ”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South