From the Bookshelf of The one who reads several books…

“Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?”

“I remember you.”

“Live long enough, and you learn how to read a person. To ease them open like a book, some passages underlined and others hidden between the lines.”

“What is a person without a mark?”

“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.”

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.

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

“Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps--perhaps--they are in reach.”

“I do not want to marry. I do not want to belong to someone else. I do not want to belong to anyone but myself. I want to be free. Free to live, and to find my own way, to love, or to be alone, but at least it is my choice, and I am so tired of not having choices, so scared of the years rushing past beneath my feet. I do not want to die as I've lived, which is no life at all.”

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

“Do you think a life has any value if one doesn’t leave some mark upon the world?”

No matter how many times she walks these blocks, no matter how many hours, or days, or years she spends learning the contours of New York, as soon as she turns her back it seems to shift again, reassemble. Buildings go up and come down, businesses open and close, people arrive and depart and the deck shuffles itself again and again and again.

“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.”

“The vexing thing about time,” he says, “is that it’s never enough. Perhaps a decade too short, perhaps a moment. But a life always ends too soon.”

“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.”

“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.”

“They teach you growing up that you are only one thing at a time—angry, lonely, content—but he’s never found that to be true. He is a dozen things at once. He is lost and scared and grateful, he is sorry and happy and afraid.”

“It is easy to be honest when there are no wrong words, because the words don't stick. When whatever you say belongs to only you.”

“And when she does look up, her gaze always goes to the edge of town.
"A dreamer," scorns her mother.
"A dreamer," mourns her father.
"A dreamer," warns Estele.
Still, it does not seem such a bad word.
Until Adeline wakes up.”