John Wiswell > Quotes

“No young woman of means has gone through her entire life without at least once surveying her opportunities and wishing for a dragon instead.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“All Shesheshen could do for Homily was be patient with her, and make space for her, and eventually, one day behind her back, eat her mother.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“[...]for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Weaknesses were a human invention. They called it your weakness if they fantasized about murdering you with it.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Homily professed her love by digging a second crossbow bolt of Shersheshin's body. It was so much clearer a declaration of affection than any of those speeches spun by poets or playwrights. And stuffed into the mouths of actors who pretended to be enamored. One could only pretend to love in language. True love was a woman sinking up to her elbows in her viscera.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“I'm not intimidated by books. I would crush them in a fight.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Romance was awful. She couldn't even murder people anymore.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Nobody actually helped each other. That's why people had religions, hoping gods would provide help where people refused.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“I do not know what you call it. The thing that is not flesh or bone or organs. In the panic, I needed to make sure the greater things were safe... What do you call that thing that I had to save? I had to save it. I had to save us. You are my safety.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“This was the same mistake so many humans made: believing someone would leap over trauma when it hurt them badly enough.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“I know some of your kindness comes from pain. Scabs mistaken for flesh.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Shesheshen wrapped her arms around Homily and held her to her chest for a moment, mourning the realization that she'd fallen in love with someone's pain.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Inside her chest, where humans put their lungs, she placed an open bear trap. It was her prized skeletal possession. It did not trap bears anymore. Instead, she kept it as a secret pair of jaws, for when people needed to be bitten.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Having a nose made Shesheshen immediately feel more human, because it let her do what humans liked most: complain.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“You do not dislike being in love with a puddle?"
Catching her breath, Homily reached for Shesheshen. An offer of consensual touch again.
"I've been a puddle on the floor too many times myself.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“It was some sort of love. Not the kind of love that made you plant your eggs in someone and turn them into a parent, but a kind of love.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“I do not know what you call it. The thing that is not flesh or bone or organs. In the panic, I needed to make sure the greater things were safe... What do you call that thing that I had to save? I had to save it. I had to save us. You are my safety.

Together they became a comfort she never wanted to leave.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“She was going to have to socialize. Reading what humans wanted from each other was so much easier than when those attentions were directed at her.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“There is no educational resource in the cosmos greater than a nerd who thinks you’re wrong.”
― John Wiswell, D.I.Y

“This revelry was a kind of fear, for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Your family shouldn't have built a household out of your pain.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“These were emotions she didn't know how to carry. There was the insult of having her death celebrated when she wasn't even dead. When she was, in fact, amidst them all right now, and only out here because they'd sent killers to fail in her home.

But this? To be dying from the poison of those assassins, and while looking for emergency food to survive the injury, to be told by a drunk rich boy with inconvenient hair that she had never really existed? Now their songs made unkind sense to her. This revelry was a kind of fear, for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.

Never had she imagined such a thing. Humans were so creative in their disappointments.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“I can’t draw you out of your anguish by arguing that it isn’t there. I can’t talk truth by telling favorable lies.”
― John Wiswell, Wearing the Lion

“Still he sneered up at her. He turned those strong cheekbones and his blond stubble up to her and said, "At least you're dying with me. The Wulfyres never forget."

Those were not the words of a worthy father. Those were the words of breakfast.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“No,' Shesheshen said. 'Do not let it hurt you. Do not try to prove you are generous by letting yourself be hurt.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Time was the sort of thing you had to care about when you belonged to more than yourself.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Her feet were up in the air, soles resting against the wall, unshaven legs jutting from her skirts. Lying that way, she peered up at a book that she balanced on her bosom, squinting at whatever the words were telling her. Her eyes narrowed further, and further, in the beginnings of a doze.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“She'd never obeyed a calendar or a bedtime. She'd never had to, because she hadn't been accountable to anyone else. Time was the sort of thing you had to care about when you belonged to more than yourself.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“This is what I mean. You are who I mean it to.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“If I fell off a cliff”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In