Addison Lane > Quotes

“I love you,” Maya whispers.

Lucía glances back at Maya. Their eyes catch, and they both smile, secrets kept between their lips, inside jokes still caught in their gaze.

“I love you, too.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart

“It’s a name that feels like Pop Rocks on his tongue—bright and crackling; not painful, but not soothing either. It’s the sound of a firecracker bursting into a million sparks and leaving only the memory of light against a smoky sky. It’s the best and worst four-letter word in his vocabulary.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams

“I’d rather kill you than let him have you,” Maya whispers, and then she lunges, her elbow circling Harper’s throat, her body pressed to his back. “Either of you.”

“Thanks,” Harper manages to grunt.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Black Tree Chaise

“You aren’t supposed to love the people you’ve left behind. You aren’t supposed to be jealous when they move on. You aren’t supposed to want what you can’t have. You’re only supposed to love one person at a time.

Who made all these rules?

They don’t make any sense.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Girl Who Grew Antlers

“P stands for parents and paradoxes.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart

“He wonders how many ghosts walk the desert, how many people particles are buzzing around, physical and metaphysical.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“Inside, it’s cool and grey. Dreary. A place for ghosts. She can picture them—still standing at the assembly line, ground down by punch cards and double-shifts.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart

“No one ever expects Maya. She’s like a suckerpunch personified. If you fool yourself into thinking she isn’t paying attention, or that she’s too shy or introverted to disagree with you, she will put you in your place. I like that about her, though. She’s not a mean or a hard person, but she maintains her boundaries. I’ve never been good about that. My boundaries get trampled, and I become ugly and mean. I act like someone else entirely, and I— Well, anyway, she’s everything you see and everything you don’t.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams

“And then they are falling, their hair streaming, the dog wailing against her throat. Jude’s laugh is as sharp and delirious as wind pummeling the splintered lines of broken glass. It’s a terrible sound. The mad smile on her face, the wide stretch of her lids around her eyes, is unpleasant, and yet Maya finds herself mirroring the expression—a shriek of terrified joy breaking from her throat as they hit the water.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Ones Who Couldn't Let Go

“He pictures, ludicrously, a high-speed chase through the desert: he and Rio and Whale speeding towards the Polaris camp, with Juno in his probably stolen Fauxcedes barreling after them. Whale barks out the window as they leap over hillocks and take a hard turn into the scrub, howling a devil-may-care, Fuck you!”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“This mysterious, celestial painter has put mystery into everything: the line of mountains in the distance, the river of asphalt running beyond the camp, even the patches of scrub pocking the ground. These are left navy, frosted with moonlight, but never given enough definition to look like plants, and so instead they give Beni the impression of crouching things—the kinds of things that wait until all the people have gone to sleep to uncurl from the earth and walk the land.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“Shit,” Oren mumbles.

“Shit,” Mayhem echoes.

“Fuck-fuck.”

Manu looks around, shrugging. “I didn’t want to get jinxed.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams

“Her hands are red and raw. Her calluses have nearly worn away—burial mounds for the talent she used to possess.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Witch's Judgment

“This dream has a pulse. He can feel it drumming a frail tattoo: My son, my son, my son…”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Ones Who Couldn't Let Go

“There is always so much left unsaid. All the holes and cracks become distinct at a parting. She learned this with Mamaw. There is always a little regret, if not a lot.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Witch's Judgment

“Nova returns, but he won’t meet anyone’s eye, smiling with a giddy, unhinged expression when spoken to. Mason avoids him, overcome by fear or guilt—something heavy that makes itself apparent in how he slinks around, avoiding notice. Jude scrambles nearly an entire carton of eggs, which no one but she and Harper eat, and then takes a long shower that uses up all the hot water.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Black Tree Chaise

“Love was a bear trap.

The sick part was learning to love the pain.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Witch's Judgment

“No one is going to laugh, right?”

“Laugh about what?” Lucía comes around the front of the truck, pulling her hair free of its band.

Harper stares at him, genuinely confused.

Mason lets out a choked laugh. “My awkward body.”

Lucía’s brow furrows, amusement and skepticism etched into her expression. She shakes her head and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Everyone looks awkward with their clothes off.”

“Hey,” Maya barks, standing a little taller and tossing Nova’s messy forelock over one eye. “I look good. Well, normally.”

Lucía grins. “Okay, but is this the moment to point that out?”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart

“Time is still guiding her. Her enemy, her rival—that cosmic beast that nips her heels.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Girl Who Grew Antlers

“Pink electricity snakes out from her fingertips, jumping from the guitar and sending rainbow-hued sparks floating to the ceiling. She leans her hand to the strings and feels the chunky, percussive roar of the palm mute rumble through the amps. It gnaws at her bones, shakes her blood in her veins like some kind of fantastic, terrible cocktail of sound and iron, and she is so desperately happy.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams

“He liked philosophy. He liked talking in abstracts, throwing around buzzwords and smirking airily when no one knew what he was getting at (especially smug when he wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about either).”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“Its wings flicker white, and in the brief soar between roof and pump, the sun catches in its feathers, revealing rainbows floating atop the black and blue fibers. The colors roll down its body like the muscle in a great predator’s shoulders, and yet the lift of its wings and kite-like flicker of its long tail are lighter than air.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“The first time she’d met Lucía, she’d actually done a double-take. One, because Lucía had a floppy, mohawk-like shave, and it really, really suited her, but more so because she was wearing boots that looked like they were the army and a black shirt turned inside out and artistically severed, so that her stomach was just peeking through, and Maya could see she was an outie (which could have killed her).”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Ones Who Couldn't Let Go

“Now you’re a woman, and all my calluses have worn off.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart

“Four out of five,” Mamaw says. Her body clicks and groans as she shuffles to the edge of the porch. “How much time do you think I have?”

Jude flinches.

“Four out of five,” Maya agrees. “You’ll never outrun your bones like this.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams

“Pink-rimmed, silver clouds billowing across a purple sunset, bleeding into a night sky flecked with glow-in-the-dark stars and a great, white moon—her childhood bedroom, back in Blackpines. Her mother had painted a princess, sitting in the moon’s crescent curve, her curly black hair catching stardust. The princess looked like her.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart

“Maybe there’s still a part of her identity wrapped up in that first flicker of love, because she’d known for certain, even back then, that she loved him, always, with her woman’s heart.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Witch's Judgment

“Jude’s back is knobby and reptilian, her skin stretched thin over her spine and ribs. She looks like a tyrannosaurus rex bent over its catch.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Ones Who Couldn't Let Go

“Someone might like you, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be there for you. They can love hanging out with you at happy hour, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to understand if you call them at two in the morning. In fact, the more people like you, the more likely they are to want you to be nothing except the things they like about you. But most people like being liked, so when they feel someone wants them around—and people will want you around if you’re giving them something—they try to please that person. They bend over backwards. You end up used, and used is not loved. Do you get that? Nobody has a lot of friends.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams

“Puppo is fine, Nova. I would never hurt your darling boy.”

“And what about me?”

“Only if you want me to.”

“I don’t.”

Juno shrugs. “Then I won’t.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse