The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Quotes

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

...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.

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.

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.

There is a defiance in being a dreamer.

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.

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

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?.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Humans are so ill-equipped for peace.

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. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.

The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.

Never pray to the gods that answer after dark.

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.

Other people would call him sensitive, but it is more than that. The dial is broken, the volume turned all the way up. Moments of joy registered as brief, but ecstatic. Moments of pain stretched long and unbearably loud.

Take your echoes and pretend they are a voice.

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.

Spells are for witches, and witches are too often burned.

Be with me,.

everyone wants to be remembered.

Listen to me. Life can feel very long sometimes, but in the end, it goes so fast. You better live a good life.

But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten, To remember when know one else does.

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

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.

And perhaps it is just that happiness is frightening.

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.

Her shadow stretches out ahead - too long, its edges already blurring - and small white flowers tumble from her hair, littering the ground like stars. A constellation left in her wake, almost like the one across her cheeks. Seven freckles. One for every love she'd have, that's what Estele had said, when the girl was still young. One for every life she'd lead. One for every god watching over her. Now they mock her, those seven marks. Promises. Lies. She's had no loves, she's lived no lives, she's met no gods, and now she is out of time.

Even rocks wear away to nothing.

Estelle used to call these the restless days, when the warmer-blooded gods began to stir, and the cold ones began to settle. When dreamers were most prone to bad ideas, and wanderers were likely to get lost.

All she knows is that she is tired, and he is the place she wants to rest. And that, somehow, she was happy. But it is not love.

Easy to stay on the path when the road is straight and the steps are numbered.

A successful theft is an anonymous act. The absence of a mark.

History is a thing designed in retrospect.

She said no, and learned how much the word was worth.

There are days when she mourns the prospect of another year, another decade, another century. There are nights when she cannot sleep, moments when she lies awake and dreams of dying. But then she wakes, and sees the pink and orange dawn against the clouds, or hears the lament of a lone fiddle, the music and the melody, and remembers there is such beauty in the world. And she does not want to miss it—any of it.

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.

Here is a new kind of silence, rarer than the rest. The easy quiet of familiar spaces, of places that fill simply because you are not alone within them.

Nothing is all good or all bad," she says. "Life is so much messier than that." 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 years of pain? And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says, "Always.

And when the girl looks at him, she doesn't see perfect. She sees someone who cares too much, who feels too much, who is lost, and hungry, and wasting inside his curse. She sees the truth, and he doesn't know how, or why, only knows that he doesn't want it to end. Because for the first time in months, in years, his whole life, perhaps, Henry doesn't feel cursed at all. For the first time, he feels seen.

It was just so...permanent. Choosing a class became choosing a discipline, and choosing a discipline became choosing a career, and choosing a career became choosing a life, and how was anyone supposed to do that, when you only had one?.

the greatest danger in change is letting the new replace the old.

Adeline was going to be a tree, and instead, people have come brandishing an ax.

To find a way, or make your own.

There is a rhythm to moving through the world alone. You discover what you can and cannot live without, the simple necessities and small joys that define a life. Not food, not shelter, not the basic things a body needs—those are, for her, a luxury—but the things that keep you sane. That bring you joy. That make life bearable.

history is something you look back on, not something you really feel at the time. In the moment, you're just... living.

She fell in love with the darkness many times, fell in love with a human once.

She has gone so long without roots, she doesn't know how to grow them anymore. So used to losing things, she isn't sure how to hold them. How to make space in a world the size of herself.

Funny, how some people take an age to warm, and others simply walk into every room as if it’s home.

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.

Perhaps it will take twenty years. Perhaps it will take a hundred. But he is not capable of love, and she will prove it. She will ruin him. Ruin his idea of them. She will break his heart, and he will come to hate her once again. She will drive him mad, drive him away. And then, he will cast her off. And she will finally be free.

They've left his heart too open. Forgotten to close back up the armor of his chest. And now he feels... too much.

It is sad to forget. But it's a lonely thing to be forgotten.