Sarah Addison Allen

A Novel

Other Birds

ausra

Stories aren’t fiction. Stories are fabric. They’re the white sheets we drape over our ghosts so we can see them.

Zoey had a vague sense that her mother had been a great fabricator, as if to her there was no veil between what was real and what was not. It all existed together.

Zoey had spent too much of her life as an outsider to ever think of running to anyone when she was afraid. It wasn’t that she was particularly brave, she just didn’t want the disappointment of being turned away. But right now she felt a painful longing for something she couldn’t name.

“In all my years, I’ve never encountered something that didn’t mean anything.”

It was an odd feeling, when she really thought about it, not having anyone in the world who knew everything about you and loved you anyway.

History is known for sugar-coating. Sometimes it’s the only thing that can make it palatable.

He was secure in the knowledge that when a reader falls in love with a book, they have no choice but to fall in love with the author, too.

Zoey was uneasy with the thought of untold stories. What happens to them? Where do they go? If you never share your stories with at least one other person, does that mean they weren’t real, that they never really existed?

We all want to think we’re worth the trouble.

“Does it ever feel to you like the best things go away too fast, and the worst things never, ever leave you alone?”

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