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.

If you need to hurry, her oft-repeated saying went, you’re already too late.

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

MONDAY MORNING CAME ON LIKE a head cold.

There had never been any profit in wondering what might have been.

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

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

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

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