Tegan Anderson > Quotes

“That was the moment when I almost forgot we were losing the narrative that is life.”
― Tegan Anderson, Beauty in the Breakdown

“We circle each other, our gazes remaining locked, the white dress fanning out and wrapping around our legs. Neither of us make any attempt to remove it as my free hand drops to her waist, hers on my shoulder. We spin and sway down the aisle in imperfect sync to the beat of the progressing song and eventually I feel my body relax, allowing a small smile to form.”
― Tegan Anderson, Beauty in the Breakdown

“There was a moment where it feels as if we both suddenly let go. Let our worries, our pain, and our sorrow go. Nothing else seemed to matter before it was right there, right now, where we were supposed to be. The past was irrelevant. The future is still undecided.”
― Tegan Anderson, Beauty in the Breakdown

“But we’ve made the trade: one awful inescapable thing for that golden moment in time, that moment of honeycomb light and a warm summer day tapering to an eternal evening.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“Eventually, we found that there was something quite beautiful about the way in which things broke down.”
― Tegan Anderson, Beauty in the Breakdown

“Maybe it’s silly, creating a shrine to her friendship as if it’s a god, but maybe this friendship is the closest thing she has to something that feels holy.”
― Tegan Anderson, There Will Be Other Summers

“Sleep tight, little warrior," I murmur, tucking the map back into her coat. "Find your way back home for me.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“I can recount our small collection of memories from the time we spent exploring through those trees, running carelessly as if we were children again. I can easily remember the fallen tree serving as a bridge over the stream, the one that we both hung upside down from and felt all of the blood rush to our heads. I would give anything to regain that childlike sense of innocence we shared in our sparse moments of escaping from our problems. Unfortunately, they crept back as soon as the trees were fading into the horizon and the front door shut behind us.”
― Tegan Anderson, Beauty in the Breakdown

“Sometimes, I think I remember what it was like. You know, before.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“Ryn tilts his head up to the rooftops and wishes he could see a sky full of stars one more time, or the aurora borealis Asher caught through her phone camera, even if she couldn’t see it with her functioning eyes. For now, he’ll stick to the streetlights and pretend they’re stars instead.”
― Tegan Anderson, There Will Be Other Summers

“But the colours aren’t real. Nowadays, I’m not sure if my memories are either.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“Maybe there’s a treatment for why she doesn’t feel at home in her skin.
Maybe it’s just the way she was made.”
― Tegan Anderson, There Will Be Other Summers

“He taught them how to play chess and they taught him how to sew patches over the rips in his jeans until the air turned warm and they taught him how to cut his jeans into shorts instead.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“She needs this story to have a happy ending for the selfish reason of not wanting to cry on her birthday this year.
She imagines she will, anyway.”
― Tegan Anderson, There Will Be Other Summers

“It dawns on me that this is the face I will have forever if we can't find the gate: maybe eighteen, mostly dead, the eternal King of the Forest.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“Maybe, if he spends the entire night with them wrapped in blankets and laughter, he’ll spill his guts as the sun comes up.”
― Tegan Anderson, There Will Be Other Summers

“To me, love looks like golden light flooding through curtains as the sun peeks over the horizon to paint the sky with watercolors. It looks like the distorted version of a city that you know like the back of your hand through a window blurred with rain. It looks like receipts and clothing tags marking pages and passages that remind you of your memories with them in one of your favourite books.”
― Tegan Anderson, Beauty in the Breakdown

“The Forest smiles because, after all, there's nothing the Forest wants more than a King.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Ghosts

“His paint-splattered hands tremble as he rubs at the bruises which decorate his skin, purple and blue roses against a brown canvas.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“We repeat our trail of everything falling apart but not quite falling back together, of the dust of something settling but still remaining to be just that: dust.”
― Tegan Anderson, Beauty in the Breakdown

“The therapist started talking about grief and clinical depression and brain waves until Asher latched onto the phrase ‘theta waves’ and went home to research it herself, and that’s how she learned that grieving people’s waking brains seem to still be in a state of deep unconsciousness and, really, she’s just sleepwalking through life.
But at least she’s trying.
At least she thinks she is.”
― Tegan Anderson, There Will Be Other Summers

“I think about the blanket fort in my bedroom and my painting propped on the mantlepiece, all the signs that I’m meant to be alive, meant to be remembered.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“To me, love feels like fingers joining every constellation of freckles, every blemish, and every scar on your skin and creating something beautiful. It feels like the draining buzz of exhaustion that lingers until you finally see them in the flesh for the first time in weeks. It feels like a comfortable silence beneath clean sheets when a single touch speaks more than your mouth can.”
― Tegan Anderson, Beauty in the Breakdown

“The hairs on his arms are raised, and the bite of the wind has left goosebumps across his skin. I imagine that the bite is more than flesh-deep: blood running cold through his veins and his bones becoming chilled.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“As the final breaths of air drain out of my lungs, I wonder if there’s any point in continuing to breathe.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“To me, love sounds like the low hum of an engine and an eighties ballad crooning out of a static stereo, gravel crunching beneath the tires. It sounds like murmured words at three am that would usually be left unspoken, brought out by the milky tiredness and gentle giggles. It sounds like soft humming disguised by the pour of the shower and the grunt and the thud when a shampoo bottle slips out of soapy hands.”
― Tegan Anderson, Beauty in the Breakdown

“Asher thought the memories were trapped half a decade deep in her camera roll, never to be seen again, but now they’re trapped in music instead; the song sounds like a version of herself that she can’t return to anymore.”
― Tegan Anderson, There Will Be Other Summers

“I wonder how much longer I'll punish myself before I accept that I have to live with this feeling, no matter how wrong it feels. It's the only thing I have.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“But the bloody black bruise of August’s anger didn’t fade with the seasons, or the scars, or the burn from the words that followed him through the daylight, and then he realised it was him who was being haunted.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests

“Then it’s not just the butterflies I can feel on my arms. There’s the ghost of a hand resting on my waist, another tilting my chin upwards. There’s a warm chest pressed against mine. There’s a delicate kiss like a butterfly on my lips. It’s so real, as if I’m seven years old and playing in the garden, as if I’m fourteen years old and having someone’s hands on my hips and their lips on mine for the first time.”
― Tegan Anderson, Paper Forests