Blackpines Quotes

“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]”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“His skin puckers. It moves over his bones, changing texture and tautness, reshaping itself as though each brush of Juno’s fingers is a spell, transforming him.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“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

“Is Whale here? Can I have him back?”

“He is the smallest whale I have ever met.”

“How many whales have you met?”

Juno grins. Nova wonders if he hasn’t met at least one or two in his lifetime.

“A gentleperson never tells.”

“I hope you’re at least on a first name basis with them.”

“Oh, I assure you.”
― Addison Lane, 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.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“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

“Hansel never let go of Gretel’s hand, and so every wicked witch and evil stepmother was defeated. Yet he senses, as though standing next to some parallel universe, the missing part that might have been.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“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

“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

“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.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“The stranger’s eyes gleamed with impossible knowings, as though he had seen the first creature crawl onto the land, the first leaves unfurl, the first great reptile bite down and ruin its prey...”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“Beni was a sliding-scale therapist, his degree in the shape of a tattoo gun.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse

“His chestnut eyes have seen six decades worth of what should have been three.”
― 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

“He knows Rio better than he knows his own hands. They were something like something for that long.”
― 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