“This is, after all, Nova’s computer. Yet when he opens the browser (feeling just a pinch of guilt), it automatically goes to a photo site, and suddenly their faces are everywhere, gazing back at him from sunnier times.
Mason shrinks away, avoiding both sets of eyes. Nova, the masochist.
It would have been better if they hadn’t had that in common.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Ones Who Couldn't Let Go
“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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Girl Who Grew Antlers
“Love was a bear trap.
The sick part was learning to love the pain.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Witch's Judgment
“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!”
Source: Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse
“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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart
“His father smiles, all the lines in his face collapsing, but this time, the map they draw leads to a quiet joy.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Girl Who Grew Antlers
“Jude was not human before she met Maya. She was a changeling, a facsimile: something that only ever looked human, but never knew what human felt like. So, of course, Maya ruined her. She took Jude’s hollow bones and filled them with thoughts and emotions like lead, so that she fell down to earth—so that she couldn’t fly away anymore.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart
“People will cast you as their villain. No good deed, no act of compassion or charity will change their mind, but it doesn’t make you a villain. Cut them loose. You don’t belong to them.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Girl Who Grew Antlers
“Now you’re a woman, and all my calluses have worn off.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart
“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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Ones Who Couldn't Let Go
“Don’t give me love advice. You’re a maiden aunt.”
“I’m not a maiden—”
“No. We will never speak of this moment again,” he says, sliding off the stool.
She laughs, swatting him with the dish rag.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Black Tree Chaise
“Her hands are red and raw. Her calluses have nearly worn away—burial mounds for the talent she used to possess.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Witch's Judgment
“You walked around like you were the first man to ever grieve, like you’re the only person to ever lose someone. What gave you the right?”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Witch's Judgment
“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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Witch's Judgment
“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.”
Source: 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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse
“His chestnut eyes have seen six decades worth of what should have been three.”
Source: Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse
“Happinesses, I don’t think they have to be mutually exclusive.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart
“Harper smiles just a little. “You know...”
Oren tilts his head.
“Um, never mind.”
“Man, don’t do that. It’s the worst.”
Harper shakes his head, cheeks turning hot. He rubs his face against his shoulder. “Just pointless, sentimental what-ifs.”
“What-ifs can be like wishes. You don’t have to squash them.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Black Tree Chaise
“Mason cries, a complicated sound full of abating grief and rising joy.
/That is what it means to be human/, Jude whispers—to herself, to the Witch.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Witch's Judgment
“P stands for parents and paradoxes.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Overcrowded Heart
“All these years they've told each other that there were no secrets and no lies between them, but love was harder than that, and sometimes edits and omissions were a form of kindness.”
Source: 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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Black Tree Chaise
“Jude laughs, and it burns through the dryer-hot air like the first crack of thunder. The crow caws and caws behind her—laughing or screaming, Maya can’t tell. “We are not babysitters. We did not come here to take care of little boys.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams
“I don’t have any money,” he tells her.
“I know,” she replies, leaning over and unearthing a wallet. “But I found some.”
“‘Found.’”
She pulls out a card and puts the green leather square onto the console. The edge is riddled with tooth marks, and Nova frowns.
“That’s Harper’s.”
“I’ll buy him a present. He won’t mind.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Black Tree Chaise
“It was a scent that suggested someone more Minotaur than Theseus, more Grendel than Beowulf, and Nova wanted to go deeper into the monster’s cave. He couldn’t find anything within him that cared whether he came out or not, as long as he found his way to its deepest, darkest depths.”
Source: 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.”
Source: 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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse
“Time is still guiding her. Her enemy, her rival—that cosmic beast that nips her heels.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Girl Who Grew Antlers
“This dream has a pulse. He can feel it drumming a frail tattoo: My son, my son, my son…”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Ones Who Couldn't Let Go
“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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams
“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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams
“Do dogs dream?” she asks the air, because Yunior doesn’t seem to be paying attention. “Do you dream about Nova?”
The dog pauses, wagging his tail with greater force.
“Nova. Nova, Nova, Nova.”
Yunior turns, wiggling all over, and leans low on his front legs, yapping.
“Sorry. No Nova here. I’d keep him in my pocket, but he’s a little too big. Only just, but still.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Ones Who Couldn't Let Go
“Shit,” Oren mumbles.
“Shit,” Mayhem echoes.
“Fuck-fuck.”
Manu looks around, shrugging. “I didn’t want to get jinxed.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams
“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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Light in Her Dreams
“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.”
Source: 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.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Black Tree Chaise
“Amaris keeps texting me pictures of him. She took him to the record shop. She says he’s really into Pink Floyd.”
He laughs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I mean, who doesn’t love The Wall?”
“I always thought he was a Yellow Submarine kind of frog.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Black Tree Chaise
“He passes the cigarette, grunting softly and pretending to be very interested in the skeleton eavesdropping on their heart-to-heart.
She softly slaps his shoulder. “Don’t make those caveman sounds at me. You know I’m right.”
“Yeah, but have you ever called your mama out on anything?”
“Never had to. She’s always been right,” she says, squaring her shoulders and smiling slyly.
He laughs.”
Source: Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Black Tree Chaise
“Beni was a sliding-scale therapist, his degree in the shape of a tattoo gun.”
Source: Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse
“That depends on how trouble is approached. We came to you nice and slow, and voilà: you can trick nearly anyone into thinking you’re domesticated.”
“Don’t talk about me like a dog,” he warns. “Besides which, you forget that I’m first and foremost a scholar.”
“Ah, I see. You’re utilizing a rare branch of philosophy: the one founded on lying to yourself because it’s convenient.”
Source: Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse
“Her messages remain resolutely static.
She sends Harper one, just to make sure it isn’t her signal: [knock knock]
But he replies quickly: [no]”
Source: Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse