The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

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

There is a freedom, after all, in being forgotten

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

“But isn’t it wonderful,” she says, “to be an idea?”

(I think that’s why I write, to try and catch the ideas before they slip away and leave me staring off into space wondering why I walked into this room, or why I opened that browser tab, or what I was looking for in the fridge.)

That is the thing about living in the present, and only the present, it is a run-on sentence. And Henry was a perfect pause in the story. A chance to catch her breath. She does not know if it was love, or simply a reprieve. If contentment can compete with passion, if warmth will ever be as strong as heat.

A story is an idea, wild as a weed, springing up wherever it is planted

After all, life seems very long sometimes, but he knows it will go so fast, and he doesn’t want to miss a moment.

Belief is a bit like gravity. Enough people believe a thing, and it becomes as solid and real as the ground beneath your feet.

“And how was it, your human love? Was it everything you dreamed of?”

“No,” she says, and it is the truth.

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.