August 2017

In our world, truth belongs to whoever has the power. On its own, it doesn't exist. That's what it took—my friend Nicole's relentless enthusiasm (backed up by my librarian's insistence)—to convince me to crack open this massive historical novel. Not usually my thing, these doorstoppers...

You shouldn't get this worked up over it. It's just a story, not reality. We spin fictions to bend the real world to what we want—that's called lying. And Marie-Joseph Sue proves herself pretty damn good at it in this novel...

Le Havre's celebrating 500 years since François I founded the city. They've turned the whole place into an outdoor art gallery. Seemed like the perfect excuse to spend a weekend there, soaking up the culture...

Some books make you feel love more intensely than what you've actually experienced. Courage beyond your own. That's what art should do—push past personal experience, reach unknown limits...

At Les Fontaines, everyone assumed danger came from outside. That you'd see it coming. Nobody thought about internal tremors, movements beneath the surface when the bells went silent at night...

Live while you're alive. Tomorrow you might be dead, just like I could've been an hour ago. Why torture yourself thinking about our existence against eternity? I read War and Peace at sixteen or seventeen...