The Hazel Wood

She talked like a woman who knew more books than people.

Look until the leaves turn red, sew the worlds up with thread. If your journey's left undone, fear the rising of the sun.

Everyone is supposed to be a combination of nature and nurture, their true selves shaped by years of friends and fights and parents and dreams and things you did too young and things you overheard that you shouldn’t have and secrets you kept or couldn’t and regrets and victories and quiet prides, all the packed-together detritus that becomes what you call your life.

We were each our own island, gathered together into one messed-up archipelago.

I walked a block on rubbery knees, feeling the way I did the time a van clipped my bike and sent me reeling into a line of parked cars. Ella had dropped her cigarette and jumped on the fallen bike, screaming at the top of her lungs as she sped after the car. Bleeding in three places, I watched her go, glad she knew I'd rather have retribution than comfort.

And while they're being told, stories create the energy that makes this world go. They keep our stars in place. They make our grass grow.

I remembered less from my own life than I did from the books I read.

I avoided my eyes while brushing my teeth, then climbed into bed with a copy of _The Blind Assassin_, because if you're not with the book you want, you might as well want the book you're with. --Melissa Albert, _The Hazel Wood_

Life was a big thing to live without a map.

Life never turns out how you imagine it will when you’re young. Everything is smaller than you think, or too big. It all smells a little funny and fits like somebody else’s shirt.

There are no lessons in it. There's just this harsh, horrible world touched with beautiful magic, where shity things happen. And they don't happen for a reason, or in threes, or in a way that looks like justice. They're set in a place that has no rules and doesn't want any. And the author's voice - - your grandmother's voice - - is perfectly pitiless. She's like a war reporter who doesn't give a fuck.

My love he wooed me My love he slew me My love he buried my bones His love he married His love I buried My love now wanders alone

So my name, my full name, is Ellery Oliver Djan-Nelson-Abrams-Finch." "Does that fit on a Scantron?" "A what?" "Nevermind.

Some bitch? She was my girlfriend for eight months. It's so ugly when girls call each other that word." "Oh, my god, Finch, go get a liberal arts degree.

Usually when I looked at people too long I started seeing them as component parts: Bony noses. Eyeballs in sockets. Odd cartilage curve of ears and fingers so strange and overevolved and makeup floating just over the skin and what the hell was with pants, and knees, and how did we walk around like all of this was normal?

Every time we left a place, I felt the things that happened there being wiped clean, till all that was left was Ella, our fights and our talks and our winding roads. I wrote down dates and places in the corners of my books, and lost them along the way.

We were checked in by a man who looked exactly how the guy checking you in at a cheap motel in the middle of the night is supposed to.

When in doubt, the answer is always Death. With a capital D.

Lana left, and a guy named Norm came in to replace her. He spent the next three hours talking about a hangout he had with Lana that may or may not have been a date, not that he was worried about it, but what did I think and had Lana mentioned him? I gave him non-committal answers until I finally cracked. " Jesus Christ, Norm. This is the 'move on with your life' dance." I did a dance like I was imitating a train. "There, did that work? Lana's literally never said your name in my presence." The injured look on his face gave me a flush of dark satisfaction. "Damn, Alice, that's cold." He took off his hat, folded the brim to make it more pretentious, and re-perched it on his head.

Breathe in the light, Alice. Breathe out the anger.

You might think you have a really good reason, but nothing could be worth this. Nothing could be worth feeling this way. I feel like a changeling wearing someone else's skin. I can't remember what I liked, or what I wanted, why I worked or left the house or did anything. It's all gone... I think whatever I used to be, it dropped through the binding. I wish the rest of me had gone with it.

You might think it’s strange, but you get used to those karmic moments in the book business. Books want to be read, and by the right people. There’s nothing surprising in it, not to me.

The quickest way to end this is to begin it, and that's no way to start, is it?

I hated Tennessee Williams's Laura. She reminded me too much of a fairy-tale character. Not the ones my grandmother wrote, allegedly-- those women drew blood. No, she was the worst type of Grimm Brothers beauty: isolated, soft-spoken, waiting for a man to save her. She probably look like me.

if you’re not with the book you want, you might as well want the book you’re with.

I wanted my mom, in a way you maybe can’t ever want anyone else. It was primal and sharp and it made me feel like a needle in the haystack of a cold and terrible world. I wanted my mom.

Bleeding in three places, I watched her go, glad she knew I’d rather have retribution than comfort.