The collection / 158 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

158 results · Page 6 of 7Play this collection ▷

01c. 1964 AD

She shrieks above the din. "If you wish a battle, I shall give it. I am the last of my kind. I shall not lie down without a fight.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

02c. 1964 AD

I'm an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

03c. 1964 AD

I’m not that kind of Indian,” Shanti said, her practiced smile never leaving her face, though it faltered just a bit, and in that slight wobble was something hard and angry, something that looked like centuries of colonial oppression boiling up into an I’m-going-to-kick-your-ass-in-this-pageant-and-then-take-over-all-your-beauty-out-sourcing-needs hatred.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

04c. 1964 AD

I’m a wild girl from a cursed line of women. I paw at the ground and run under the moon. I like the feel of my own body. I’m not a slut or a nympho or someone who’s just asking for it. And if I talk too loud it’s just that I’m trying to be heard.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

05c. 1964 AD

So I slap on that smile and pretend everything’s okay even though it’s not.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

06c. 1964 AD

Beliefs converge and become something new all the time.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

07c. 1964 AD

I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion revisions, large and small, that go into the writing of a book.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

08c. 1964 AD

Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

09c. 1964 AD

We have work to do if you are not to be a total failure like high-waisted, acid-wash jeans.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

10c. 1964 AD

The wind has shifted to the East. A storm isn't far off. I can smell the moisture in the air, a fetid, living thing. Isolated drops fall, licking at my hands, my face, my dress. The quests squawk in surprise, turn their palms up to the sky as if questioning it, and dash for cover.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

11c. 1964 AD

Every city is a ghost.New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

12c. 1964 AD

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 / quote

↗

13c. 1964 AD

For dreams, too, are ghosts, desires chased in sleep, gone by morning.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

14c. 1964 AD

Ain't that a sight? With all the things we know and learn, we still ain't touched the big mysteries -- where we come from, where we go next, why we even her. And when something truly miraculous happens, we run and hide in our caves. We deny.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

15c. 1964 AD

Memphis found his smile. 'You know me, sir. I don't wear worry.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

16c. 1964 AD

I have done what they expected of me. I have curtsied for my Queen and made my debut. This is what I have anticipated eagerly for years. So why do I feel so unsatisfied? Everyone is merry. They haven't a care in the world. And perhaps that is it. How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

17c. 1964 AD

I don't think you should die until you're ready. Until you've wrung out every last bit of living you can.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

18c. 1964 AD

You can’t believe how bleeding scary the sea is! There’s, like, whales and storms and shit! They don’t bloody tell you that!

Libba Bray / quote

↗

19c. 1964 AD

I've been thinking about that book about the boys who crash on the island....Lord of the Flies what about it....You know how you said it wasn't a true measure of humanity since there were no girls and you wondered how it would be different if there had been girls...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.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

20c. 1964 AD

There had been 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 / quote

↗

21c. 1964 AD

It's over, her mind whispered. There's still hope, her heart insisted.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

22c. 1964 AD

I will never, ever drink whiskey again. From now on, it's strictly sherry.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

23c. 1964 AD

Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?""What's the point of that, Miss?" the waiter said."Tomorrow morning," Mabel said.

Libba Bray / quote

↗

24c. 1964 AD

What Hamlet suffers from is a lack of zombies. Let us say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up—Ho-HO! Now you’ve got something that stirs the, um, something that stirs things that are stirrable. BOOM! A pack of ravenous flesh-eaters breaks open their heads and sucks out their eyeballs. No need for iambic pentameter because they are grunting, groaning annihilators of humanity with no time for meter. You’re not asleep in the back of English class anymore, are you? This is what I’m talking about. Zombies. Learn it, live it, love it.

Libba Bray / quote

↗