Malayna Nutt > Malayna's Quotes

“Humans are so ill-equipped for peace.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives--or to find strength in a very long one.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“...it is sad, of course, to forget.
But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.
To remember when no one else does.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

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

“That time always ends a second before you’re ready.

That life is the minutes you want minus one.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.”
― 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

“Do you think a life has any value if one doesn’t leave some mark upon the world?”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Listen to me. Life can feel very long sometimes, but in the end, it goes so fast. You better live a good life.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Perhaps it is just that happiness is frightening.”
― V.E. Schwab

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

“art is about ideas. And ideas are wilder than memories. They're like weeds, always finding their way up.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

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

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

“the greatest danger in change is letting the new replace the old.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“history is something you look back on, not something you really feel at the time. In the moment, you're just... living.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“She will grow out of it, her parents say - but instead, Adeline feels herself growing in, holding tighter to the stubborn hope of something more.

The world should be getting larger. Instead, she feels it shrinking, tightening like chains around her limbs as the flat lines of her own body begin to curve out against it, and suddenly the charcoal beneath her nails is unbecoming, as is the idea that she would choose her own company over Arnaud's or George'sm or any man who might have her.

She is at odds with everything, she does not fit, an insult to her sex, a stubborn child in a woman's form, her head bowed and arms wrapped tight around her drawing pad as if it were a door.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Want is for children. If this were want, I would be rid of you by now. I would have forgotten you centuries ago,” he says, a bitter loathing in his voice. “This is need. And need is painful but patient. Do you hear me, Adeline? I need you. As you need me. I love you, as you love me.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

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

“Funny, how some people take an age to warm, and others simply walk into every room as if it’s home.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“They've left his heart too open. Forgotten to close back up the armor of his chest. And now he feels... too much.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

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

“So much of life becomes routine, but food is like music, like art, replete with the promise of something new.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Listen to me." Her voice is urgent now. "Life can feel very long sometimes, but in the end, it goes so fast." Her eyes are glassy with tears, but she is smiling. "You better live a good life, Henry Strauss.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“You see only flaws and faults, weaknesses to be exploited. But humans are messy, Luc. That is the wonder of them. They live and love and make mistakes, and they feel so much.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“It does,” he admits, before nodding at her attire. “And yet,” he says with an impish grin, “you strike me as someone not easily restrained. Aut viam invenium aut faciam, and so on.”

She does not know Latin yet, and he does not offer a translation, but a decade from now, she will look up the words, and learn their meaning.

To find a way, or make your own.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“There’s no way to un-know the fact that someone is dying. It eats away all the normal, and leaves something wrong and rotten in its place.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“She will learn in time that she can lie, and the words will flow like wine, easily poured, easily swallowed. But the truth will always stop at the end of her tongue. Her story silenced for all but herself.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“There’s a Japanese phrase that I like: koi no yokan. It doesn’t mean love at first sight. It’s closer to love at second sight. It’s the feeling when you meet someone that you’re going to fall in love with them. Maybe you don’t love them right away, but it’s inevitable that you will.”
― Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star