The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

by V.E. Schwab

How do you walk to the end of the world? she once asked. And when Addie didn’t know, the old woman smiled that wrinkled grin, and answered. One step at a time.

To find a way, or make your own.

“Would you rather feel nothing or everything?”

She wonders if you can distill a person’s life, let alone human civilization, to a list of things, wonders if that’s a valid way to measure worth at all, not by the lives touched, but the things left behind.

Now it all makes sense. He makes sense. This boy, who could never sit still, never waste time, never put off a single thing. This boy, who writes down every word she says, so she’ll have something when he’s gone, who doesn’t want to lose even a single day, because he doesn’t have that many more. This boy she’s falling in love with. This boy, who will soon be gone.

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

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