Black Iris Quotes

“Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it's total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral.

And it's relentless.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“If I was gay, I wouldn't need an asterisk beside my name. I could stop worrying if the girl I like will bounce when she finds out I also like dick. I could have a coming-out party without people thinking I just want attention. I wouldn't have to explain that I fall in love with minds, not genders or body parts. People wouldn't say I'm 'just a slut' or 'faking it' or 'undecided' or 'confused.' I'm not confused. I don't categorize people by who I'm allowed to like and who I'm allowed to love. Love doesn't fit into boxes like that. It's blurry, slippery, quantum. It's only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Falling for someone is like pulling a loose thread. It happens stitch by stitch. You feel whole most of the time even while the seams pop, the knots loosen, everything that holds you together coming undone. It feels incredible, this opening of yourself to the world. Not like the unraveling it is. Only afterward do you glance down at the tangle of string around your feet that used to be a person who was whole and self-contained and realize that love is not a thing that we create. It's an undoing.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“I never wanted to be saved. I wanted someone to follow me down into the darkness.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“In a typical college romance novel, he'd be a gorgeous but troubled sex god who'd cure all my deep-seated psych issues with a good hard fuck. I'd smell his misogyny and abusive tendencies from miles off but my brain would turn to hormone soup because abs. That's the formula. Broken girl + bad boy = sexual healing. All you need to fix that tragic past is a six-pack. More problems? Add abs.

It's Magic Dick Lit.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Maybe all you need to pull you back form the ledge is to know someone would miss you if you fell.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“I am not the heroine of this story.

And I'm not trying to be cute. It's the truth. I'm diagnosed borderline and seriously fucked-up. I hold grudges. I bottle my hate until it ferments into poison, and then I get high off the fumes. I'm completely dysfunctional and that's the way I like it, so don't expect a character arc where I finally find Redemption, Growth, and Change, or learn How to Forgive Myself and Others.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Sometimes all you know about where you're going is that it's away from where you are.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Strength is not in the body, it’s in the mind. It doesn’t lie in flexing your muscles and crushing those who oppose you. It lies in being the last one standing. By any means. At any cost.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Fuck forgiveness.

That’s what they want me to do. Make it easy for them. Clear their consciences. Let them get away with what they’ve done.

The powerful. The strong. The privileged.

Not a fucking chance.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Girls get under each other's skin. We get too close, too attached, too crazy, and then we can't let go. Our claws sink too deep. When we separate, we tear each other apart.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“This is what helps me sleep at night. Knowing that one of us stood up and refused to take it. One of us said, Fuck you, and struck back.

One of us became the wolf and bloodied her jaws so that others can live without fear.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Anyone who's happy in a world this fucked-up has some serious psychological issues. You think I'm crazy because I see things as they are. You'd rather put on Disneyland goggles and watch TV and pretend it's fine. It's not crazy if I see monsters when I live in a fucking nightmare.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Suicide isn't really about death, though. It's about change. Release.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Mom used to say that if you listen, people will tell you exactly how to hurt them. Because part of us wants to be hurt. We want to know how strong we really are.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“If I could fall in love with a girl, it’d be her. Those ifs are dangerous. You try them on in your head like dresses, so easy to slide in and out of. If I kissed girls, I’d kiss her. If we kissed, it’d go like this. At some point I dropped the if like a slip and just wore the feeling, nothing between it and my skin. When I kiss her. When it happens. All of it took place in my head, in silence, locked tight in skull bone and the frantic synaptic whispers between neurons, no clues popping out except the passive-aggressive haircut, the incriminating poem.

That’s the problem with writers. Too much imagination.

The greater part of me knew it couldn’t be real, but the hopeful part, which is more concentrated and condensed, rich in nine essential delusions, thought: It’s not all in your head.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“I told you what I was when we began. I’m the black iris watered by poison. The wolf that raised its head among sheep and devoured its way, ruthless and bloody, to freedom. I never forgave, never forgot.

I didn’t feel sorry. I felt bad. As in bad girl, not guilty. And feeling bad made me feel so fucking good.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Most of the time romance isn't even about love, anyway. It's about escape. Fantasy. Salvation from the mundane. Save me from boredom, from exhaustion, from my undersexed body, from microwave dinners and reality TV, from going to bed alone with a vibrator or a cat. Save me from my desperately ordinary life.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Sometimes you feel things so much, so intensely, it becomes a new kind of numbness, the oblivion of overstimulation.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“The clearest sign of coming catastrophe is when all the bad shit in your life suddenly stops. You’re entering the eye of the shitstorm.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“This life will be a cage for you.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Angels trying to scar themselves, bored of perfection.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“Boys are so beautiful when they don’t realize how powerful they are. When they hold it with quiet grace, oblivious to how easily they could rip the world apart.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“It’s not crazy if I see monsters when I live in a fucking nightmare.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“I wouldn't have to explain that I fall in love with minds, not genders or body parts.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“The whole summer was inside of us.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“We got high together, got drunk, got off on saliva and skin, and still found no way to capture this feeling. It was so much bigger than us, so brutal. Even when we fucked as savagely as we could bear it was only the shadow of this thing between us. Killing each other would hint at a fraction of it. I couldn’t fuck it out of her, couldn’t bleed it out of myself, couldn’t purge, drug, numb it away. Like the dark seed in me, this was a drive so deep it was embedded in my core. I had never loved a girl like this. I had never loved.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“That’s not who you are,” Blythe said.

“Who am I?”

“My little wolf.” She traced my jaw, the ridge of my knuckles. “All teeth and claws. Cunning, and fierce, and insatiable.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“I don't categorize people by who I'm allowed to like and who I'm allowed to love. Love doesn't fit into boxes like that. It's blurry, slippery, quantum. It's only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“You drugged me,” she repeated, her fingers wrapping around my neck, “with your skin, and your hands, and your mouth. You’re in my veins. My blood.” Her lips were a breath’s width from mine, her wolf teeth bright. We teetered on the delirious brink of a kiss. “You poisoned me, and it feels so fucking good. I want more.”

My breath came fast. “Will you do it with me?”

“Yeah, I will. I’ll fuck this world up with you.”

“Good girl,” I said. “Let’s be bad.”

I tore off her clothes. I tore off every shred of resistance she still held. And I fucked her, wild and rough, animal, like the monsters we were.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris