The Diviners Quotes

“People always fear what they don't understand, Evangeline. History proves that.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“Clothing left on the bed unfolded. Books stained with coffee spots. Tabs not paid until the last possible second. Boys kissed and then forgotten in a week’s time.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“On the Bowery, in the ornate carcass of a formerly grand vaudeville theater, a dance marathon limps along. The contestants, young girls and their fellas, hold one another up, determined to make their mark, to bite back at the dreams sold to them in newspaper advertisements and on the radio. They have sores on their feet but stars in their eyes.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“The wind swoops over the tenements on Orchard Street, where some of those starry-eyed dreams have died and yet other dreams are being born into squalor and poverty, an uphill climb. It gives a slap to the laundry stretched on lines between tenements, over dirty, broken streets where, even at this hour, hungry children scour the bins for food. The wind has existed forever. It has seen much in this country of dreams and soap ads, old horrors and bloodshed. It has played mute witness to its burning witches, and has walked along a Trail of Tears; it has seen the slave ships release their human cargo, blinking and afraid, into the ports, their only possession a grief they can never lose.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“We are the dead. We are the keepers of the stories. We hold the history of blood and promises. We are speaking. Are you listening? Will you hear?”
― Libba Bray

“Did everyone from your little Hans Christian Andersen village look the same?”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“Gideon isn't for sale mister.

Ah, yes. Like the Louisana Purchase, or Manhattan. I see. Should I have come with a purse full of beads and a wagon of diseased blankets? ... Can't you smell the history in the air? No doubt their grandfathers rushed across these prairies in their wagons, knocking down the natives, smashing in their brains in their zeal to stake their claim. That pioneer spirit. My, what a land! What a people! I've learned so much from you”
― Libba Bray, The King of Crows

“We are the Diviners. We have been and we will be. It is a power that comes from the great energy of the land and its people, a realm shared for a spell, for as long as is needed. We see the dead. We speak to restless spirits. We walk in dreams. We read meaning from every held thing. The future unfolds for us like the navigator’s map, showing seas we have yet to travel.

The Diviners must stand, or all shall fall.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners