The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives--or to find strength in a very long one.”

“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?”

“...it is sad, of course, to forget.But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.To remember when no one else does.”

“Three words, large enough to tip the world. I remember you.”

“A dreamer,” scorns her mother.“A dreamer,” mourns her father.“A dreamer,” warns Estele.Still, it does not seem such a bad word.”

“What she needs are stories.Stories are a way to preserve one's self. To be remembered. And to forget.Stories come in so many forms: in charcoal, and in song, in paintings, poems, films. And books.Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”

“There is a defiance in being a dreamer”

“Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because visions weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades.... Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end... everyone wants to be remembered”

“Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.”

“Blink, and the years fall away like leaves.”

“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”

“Stories are a way to preserve one's self. To be remembered. And to forget.”

“Take a drink every time you hear you’re not enough.Not the right fit.Not the right look.Not the right focus.Not the right drive.Not the right time.Not the right job.Not the right path.Not the right future.Not the right present.Not the right you.Not you.(Not me?)There’s just something missing.From us.What could I have done?Nothing. It’s just…(Who you are.)I didn’t think we were serious.(You’re just too……sweet.…soft.…sensitive.)I just don’t see us ending up together.I met someone.I’m sorryIt’s not you.Swallow it down.We’re not on the same page.We’re not in the same place.It’s not you.We can’t help who we fall in love with.(And who we don’t.)You’re such a good friend.You’re going to make the right girl happy.You deserve better.Let’s stay friends.I don’t want to lose you.It’s not you.I’m sorry.”

“Don't you remember, she told him then, when you were nothing but shadow and smoke?Darling, he'd said in his soft, rich way, I was the night itself.”

“Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered?”

“Do you know how to live three hundred years?” she says. And when he asks how, she smiles. “The same way you live one. A second at a time.”

“But this is how you walk to the end of the world. This is how you live forever. Here is one day, and here is the next, and the next, and you take what you can, savor every stolen second, cling to every moment, until it’s gone.”

“His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.”

“But a life without art, without wonder, without beautiful things—she would go mad. She has gone mad.”

“It is just a storm, he tells himself, but he is tired of looking for shelter. It is just a storm, but there is always another waiting in its wake.”

“That time always ends a second before you’re ready.That life is the minutes you want minus one.”

“The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price. And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”

“You know,” she’d said, “they say people are like snowflakes, each one unique, but I think they’re more like skies. Some are cloudy, some are stormy, some are clear, but no two are ever quite the same.”

“And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it.Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow?Were the moments of beauty worth the year of pain?And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says 'Always.”

“I am stronger than your god and older than your devil. I am the darkness between stars, and the roots beneath the earth. I am promise, and potential, and when it comes to playing games, i divine the rules, I set the pieces, and I choose when to play.”

“Do not mistake this kindness. I simply want to be the one who breaks you.”

“I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”

“Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vécu. ”

“Adeline has decided she would rather be a tree, like Estele. If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky.”

“March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.”