The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

by V.E. Schwab

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

“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”

So much of life becomes routine, but food is like music, like art, replete with the promise of something new.

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.”

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

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 was messy. It was hard. It was wonderful, and strange, and frightening, and fragile—so fragile it hurt—and it was worth every single moment.