The Second Life of Ava Rivers

Life, it keeps going. That's pretty much all it is when you boil it down: perpetual motion.

Besides, the library’s the world’s best-kept secret,” he said, surprising me, because he never for one second struck me as a bookworm. “It’s the only place where anything’s possible and everyone will leave you alone.

Maybe joy is even more potent when you’ve known the depth of its opposite.

It would be amazing if there were a reason for all this. A reason for her misfortune, a reason for her captivity and abuse, a reason for her return. I'm skeptical at first as we steep in the contemplative silence. But then I remember reasons are human inventions.

Funny how we're not just our features, we're the areas between.

imagine what it would be like to be ridiculed and victim-blamed

It’s like, mind and body work in tandem, so she thinks she’s sick and then she convinces herself and it manifests in her body, so she actually is sick at this point. Her fake Lyme disease has totally crippled her for real.

Tonight it’s Wexican food. You know, corporate white people faking Mexican

Love is an excruciating delicacy. Maybe that is its force.

Maybe joy is even more potent when you've known the depth of its opposite.

I grab a book. I sit in the corner. My eyes fall on the page, and I disappear into the ink.