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?”

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.

Once you know about a thing, you start to see it everywhere.

“If you could have anything,” he says, “what would you ask for?”
“That depends,” she says. “What’s the cost?”
“How do you know there’s a cost?”
“There’s always give and take.”
“Okay,” says Henry, “if you sold your soul for one thing, what would it be?”

“He wasn’t in love with who I was, not really. He was in love with who I could have been. He wanted me to change, and I didn’t, and—”

(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.