Magic for Liars: A Novel

It was a feeling like nostalgia, but for something I’d never done. Something I’d never had.

The thing about me is, I let things go. I let people go. I don’t know how to hang on to them—I try, but I hold too tight or not tight enough or something in between and they go. They always go.

Walls too high to ever turn into bridges.

I’ve always been good at letting silence put down roots.

There are more interesting things to be done with words.

I tried not to feel temporary. Just for a few seconds. But trying not to feel something isn’t the same as not feeling it, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I was alone again.

There was something in the flavor of it that spoke to a desperate lostness,

Being brave means holding your fear in one hand and your responsibility in the other, and this kid was doing what he thought was right, even while he was pants-shittingly scared of whatever he’d found out.

Affirmation and illusion, bound up tighter than two snakes in the same egg.