Magic for Liars: A Novel

I can never give any of them what they really want: I can’t fix a marriage, and I can’t undo a lie, and I can’t raise the dead. And I can never tell them, because they think they just want answers.

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.

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

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

I’ve never been good at recognizing what moments are important. What things I should hang on to while I’ve got them.

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.

toward the juvenile that said, We still get to be kids, right?

MONDAY MORNING CAME ON LIKE a head cold.

They wouldn’t be able to resist the story, because they were all trying desperately to find the Thing, the elusive Something that would make every adult’s prediction come true: These are the best years of your life.