Essezt

“Take your echoes and pretend they are a voice.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“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?”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Time moves so fucking fast.

Blink, and you’re halfway through school, paralyzed by the idea that whatever you choose to do, it means choosing not to do a hundred other things, so you change your major half a dozen times before finally ending up in theology, and for a while it seems like the right path, but that’s really just a reflex to the pride on your parents’ faces, because they assume they’ve got a budding rabbi, but the truth is, you have no desire to practice, you see the holy texts as stories, sweeping epics, and the more you study, the less you believe in any of it.

Blink, and you’re twenty-four, and you travel through Europe, thinking—hoping—that the change will spark something in you, that a glimpse of the greater, grander world will bring your own into focus. And for a little while, it does. But there’s no job, no future, only an interlude, and when it’s over, your bank account is dry, and you’re not any closer to anything.

Blink, and you’re twenty-six, and you’re called into the dean’s office because he can tell that your heart’s not in it anymore, and he advises you to find another path, and he assures you that you’ll find your calling, but that’s the whole problem, you’ve never felt called to any one thing. There is no violent push in one direction, but a softer nudge a hundred different ways, and now all of them feel out of reach.

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.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“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.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue