Quotessence
Home / Authors / V.E. Schwab Biography

V.E. Schwab Biography

Author

Related Quotes

“Of all the inventions Addie has seen her ushered into the world — steam-powered trains, electric lights, photography, and phones, and airplanes, and computers — movies might just be her favorite one. Books are wonderful, portable, lasting, but sitting there, in the darkened theater, the wide screen filling her vision, the world falls away, and for a few short hours she is someone else, plunged into romance and intrigue and comedy and adventure.”

ImaginationFantasyBooksComfortMoviesEscapismFavoritesInventions
Book:The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Create image

“There's this family photo," he says, "not the one in the hall, this other one, from back when I was six or seven. That day was awful. Muriel put gum in David's book and I had a cold, and my parents were fighting right up until the flash went off. And in the photo, we all look so . . . happy. 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.”

FamilyPhotographyLies
Book:The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Create image

“Everyone thinks I have a death wish, ya know. But I don't want to die. Dying is easy. No I want to live. But getting close to death is the only way to feel alive. And once you do it makes you realize that everything you were doing before wasn't actually living. It was just making due. Call me crazy, but I think we do the best living when the stakes are high.”

LivingLife And DeathFeeling AliveBeing Alive Doesn T Mean LivingDeathwish
Book:A Gathering of Shadows
Create image

“That is the madness of it. Every day is amber, and she is the fly trapped inside. No way to think in days or weeks when she lives in moments. Time begins to lose its meaning - and yet, she has not lost track of time. She cannot seem to misplace it (no matter how she tries) and so Addie knows what month it is, what day, what night, and so she knows it has been a year. A year since she ran from her own wedding. A year since she fled from the woods. A year since she sold her soul for this. For freedom. For time. A year, and she has spent it leaning the boundaries of this new life.”

PastTimeChange
Book:The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Create image

“Three hundred years, and some part of her is still afraid of forgetting. There have been times, of course, when she wished her memory more fickle, when she would have given anything to welcome madness, and disappear. It is the kinder road, to lose yourself. Like Peter, in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. There, at the end, when Peter sits on the rock, the memory of Wendy Darling sliding from his mind, and it is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten. To remember when no one else does.”

LonelinessForgettingRemembering
Book:The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Create image

“She stands there until she realizes she is waiting. Waiting for someone to help. To come and fix the mess she's in. But no one is coming. No one remembers, and if she resigns herself to waiting, she will wait forever. So she walks. And as she walks, she studies Paris. Makes note of this house, and that road, of bridges, and carriage horses, and the gates of a garden. Glimpses roses beyond the wall, beauty in the cracks.”

BeautyObservationParisCity
Book:The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Create image

“He always liked learning. Loved it, really. If he could have spent his whole life sitting in a lecture hall, taking notes, could have drifted from department to department, haunting different studies, soaking up language and history and art, maybe he would have felt full, happy. That's how he spent the first two years. And those first two years, he was happy. He had Bea, and Robbie, and all he had to do was learn. Build a foundation. It was the house, the one that he was supposed to build on top of that smooth surface, that was the problem. 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? But teaching, teaching might be a way to have what he wanted. Teaching is an extension of learning, a way to be a perpetual student.”

EducationLearningTeachingFuture
Book:The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Create image