Sarah > Sarah's Quotes

“I wanted to protect you, but I'm starting to think that the best thing you can do for people is teach them how to protect themselves. Every girl needs to be at least a little dangerous.”
― Kai Cheng Thom, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars

“Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Sometimes I just want to go in a room and break things and scream. Like, it’s so much pressure all the time and if you get upset or angry, people say, ‘Are you on the rag of something?’ And it’s like I want to say, ‘No. I’m just pissed off right now. Can’t I just be pissed off? How come that’s not okay for me?’ Like my dad will say, ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re hysterical.’ And I’m totally not being hysterical! I’m just mad. And he’s the one losing it. But then I feel embarrassed anyway. So I slap on that smile and pretend everything’s okay even though it’s not.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“I’ve been thinking about that book about the boys who crash on an island,” Mary Lou said to Adina one afternoon as they rested on their elbows taking bites from the same papaya.

“Lord of the Flies. What about it?”

You know how you said it wasn’t a true measure of humanity because there were no girls and you wondered how it would be different if there had been girls?”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one’s watching them so they can be who they really are.”

There was something about the island that made the girls forget who they had been. All those rules and shalt nots. They were no longer waiting for some arbitrary grade. They were no longer performing. Waiting. Hoping.

They were becoming.

They were.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“Weren't you wearing a purity ring when we got here? Aren't you supposed to be saving yourself?" Shanti asked.

"Yeah," Mary Lou answered. "And then I thought, for what? You save leftovers. My sex is not a leftover, and it is not a Christmas present.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“God doesn't like lesbians," Grandma Huberman hised, throwing the magazine in the trash.
Jennifer knew what lesbian meant, and she knew she probably was one. But she couldn't understand why God would hold that against her or against Monica Mathers, who'd never started a war or killed anybody, and whose deadeye three-pointers were straight-up amazing. After all, hadn't God made both of them? But people were like that, she'd noticed. They'd invoke Godly privilege at the weirdest of times and for the most stupid reasons.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“There was something about the island that made the girls forget who they had been. All those rules and shalt nots. They were no longer waiting for some arbitrary grade. They were no longer performing. Waiting. Hoping.

They were becoming.

They were.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“I'd say..." Petra crossed her legs, tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. "I'd say, I am too fucking fabulous for one gender. Oh, and can we please get rid of the cheesy dance numbers? It's like torture step-ball-change."

"I'd say I am not a race. I am an individual," Nicole said.

Sosie moved her fingers gracefully, but no one understood. She waited for a moment. "I would say, learn to hear me in my own voice. I'm hearing impaired, not invisible.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“What makes a girl a girl? What makes a guy a guy? Do you have to be what they want you to be? Or do you stop and listen to that voice inside you? I know who I am. I'm Petra West. And I'm a girl. You want me to sleep somewhere else, fine. Whatever. But I'm not going to pretend to be somebody I'm not. I've done enough of that.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“I love myself. They make it so hard for us to love ourselves.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“Sosie wasn't sure how to answer. Since she could remember, she'd had crushes on both girls and guys. They were person-specific infatuations - Brian Levithan's wicked sense of humour was every bit as sexy as Valerie Martnez's sweet smile and amazing krunk routines. It seemed odd to Sosie that she had to make some hard-and-fast decision about such an arbitrary, individual thing as attraction, like having to declare an orientation major: I am straight with a minor in gay.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“And sometimes I just don't want to sparkle.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“I’ve learned that feminism is for everybody and there’s nothing wrong with taking up space in the world, even if you have to fight for it a little bit, and that if you don’t feel like smiling or waving, that’s okay. You don’t have to, and you don’t have to say sorry. Mostly, I’ve learned that I don’t really care if you like these answers or not, because they’re the best, most honest ones I’ve got, and I just don’t feel like I can cheat myself enough to give you what you want me to say.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“Life is too short not to be who you are”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“It was hard to feel safe in the world when you were a girl.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“sometimes a little crazy is all you need”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“Nicole hated that she could never quite feel like she was just herself, just Nicole, but that she was somehow representing an entire race. That’s how they saw her, as a “they” and not a “she.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“Why do girls always feel like they have to apologize for giving an opinion or taking up space in the world?”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“... she was sure that all those things she'd been taught abut feeling shame were wrong. It was not a curse to fully inhabit your body. You were only as cursed as you allowed yourself to be.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“At first, I was scared to be alone. No routines. No rules. Just me. But I think..." Taylor wiped a tear away. "I think I was always in the jungle. Before. It was always there. I think I had to come out here to find the answer."

"And what did you find?"

"I love myself. They make it so hard for us to love ourselves." Taylor stared off into the dark. Her face gleamed with tears. Snot ran over her lips. "The judges won't like that answer."

"Nobody's judging you."

Taylor choked on a sob. "Always," she whispered.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“Trust takes time.
Slowly grown, easily broken.”
― Stjepan Šejić, Sunstone, Vol. 2

“But it's a tradition, as if that alone is reason enough. Slavery and buying your wife were traditions, too.”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“Everything's always ending. But everything's always beginning, too.”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“...I hate myself. I feel like an idiot saying it because, blah, blah, teen angst, boo hoo, but I do. I hate myself. Almost all the time. I try not to tell anyone because I don't want to burden them, but I feel like I'm falling farther and farther away from them. Like the well's getting deeper and I'm running out of energy to climb it and any minute now, any second, it's going to stop being worth even trying.”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“A feeling may or may not be true, but you still feel it.”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“But when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too.”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“You told me, just now, just today, that you'd rather be dead than have to go through this much longer. I take that seriously. I don't think your suffering is fake. I don’t think these feelings about wanting it to end are fake. I don’t think your self-hatred is fake. So why do you think it’s fake?”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“Doesn’t a part of you think you’re making a big deal out of not very much? That if you were somehow not so weak, you could be happy and free just like everyone else?”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here

“Kindness is the most important thing of all. Pity is an insult. Kindness is a miracle.”
― Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here