J.M. McDermott > Quotes

“I learned that every tree fights for sunlight in the canopy, but this happens so slowly that the combat looks like peace.”
― J.M. McDermott

“Usually the things that kill us are the things we do every single day.”
― J. M. McDermott

“I think the wilderness is where things happen and no one writes about them. It is the place where there are no maps, no memorials to heroes, no gravestones, no paper and no ink.”
― J.M. McDermott, We Leave Together

“Do you know anything about hearts, Jona? The Senta know hearts. Hearts are not one organ. Inside a mother's womb, two pulsing bags of blood seek their eternal mate."
Her hand reached out to his. She opened his palm, and traced a finger down his lifeline, then his loveline. She lifted it up to her own face. She placed it on her cheek.
"Lungs are fine apart," she said, "Hands do not need another but to clap. Brains gnarl like roots in the nothing of soul, and guts spin in knots around the nothing of hunger. But hearts are made by two complete parts merging together. Once the two pieces sense each other in the blood flow, they cross every bloody cliff inside of us. The arteries bind the halves close. The veins make love to each other in the life pulse that makes all life from love entwined.”
― J.M. McDermott, When We Were Executioners

“I can see him now, the victim of labyrinthine machinations that carved away his ears and tongue: a mute prince tossed into a slaver's galley and lost at sea, and at sea until the pink weed filled his head with death, and he fell in step behind the dealer that fed a habit in exchange for cheap muscle. And now, the lost king slept mute among beggar boys and rats spreading crowns in a knighthood of orphans and drugs. Who knows his true history? All we know is his fate among the smoke.”
― J.M. McDermott, We Leave Together

“You ask me to make a promise? I am in a cage. No promise I make is trustworthy because I would do anything to be rid of this cage. Promise me that you will not treat me like an animal or a spectacle, and I will see what I can do.”
― J.M. McDermott, Straggletaggle

“Where does a city begin? Where does it end?”
― J.M. McDermott, Never Knew Another

“Everything was so broken, but it would heal. Saxonia will heal. Hollownot will heal. Everything will heal.

I was broken. I will heal.

It is certainty that destroys the souls of men.”
― J.M. McDermott, Straggletaggle

“This man was being kept alive by those machines. Someone was trying to help him. They were just trying to help. All the horrible things we've seen are just people trying to help, aren't they? To make the work a little easier, and the world a little easier for people to live in. And it turned into a nightmare.”
― J.M. McDermott, Straggletaggle

“Well, the only place worth going in the whole city is Sabachthani’s estate. Nothing else is worth the trouble”
― J.M. McDermott, When We Were Executioners

“He said I was trapped. He had trapped me. I told him to carefully consider what trapped animals do when they do not wish to be trapped.”
― J.M. McDermott, Straggletaggle

“They have joined with the dust of the world, living as they have always lived, hiding as they've always hid. They die slowly in their own stains and sins.”
― J.M. McDermott, We Leave Together

“Thievery is for the civilized. It is what laws protect us from. I am a wild beast of no laws and no society. I want no laws. I want no more civilized things.”
― J.M. McDermott, Straggletaggle

“Don't joke about this. We're it for each other. There's no one else like us. There's no one else. I really like you. I feel... I don't know what I feel. I feel like I'm better with you. I feel like I'm not so..."

She said nothing. She looked at him with tired eyes. She wasn't listening.”
― J.M. McDermott, We Leave Together

“Cages everywhere I went. I was no better off in Saxonia, excepting only for the threat of vigorous, royal incest. Perhaps this also means that a princess is only a particularly desirable kind of monstrous creature--a lure that must be kept in a box at all times.”
― J.M. McDermott, Straggletaggle

“A new girl came to work in the room, and the cat was still in it. The cat hid from the new girl in Jess’ old room behind a crack in the wall and yowled for Jess to come and throw this strange girl out of the cat’s bed. This new girl clapped her hands over her ears, and then pulled powder out from her bag of make-up. She doused a piece of old food in the powder and threw it into the wall for the cat to eat.
Later that night, Rachel had to pull the dead cat from a crack in the wall with a long broom handle.
Rachel threw the dead cat over the wall, where the rain would come to wash the body into the sewers.
With Jess crying somewhere about her lost cat—selling hot corn among the thugs and night bruisers, paying for anything stolen—Rachel figured that the powder had done exactly what it had been made to do. The powder had killed a working girl’s baby.”
― J.M. McDermott, When We Were Executioners

“Would you die for me, like Jona did for his beloved?
No. You shouldn't die for me, either. Let me sleep.
Liar.”
― J.M. McDermott, We Leave Together

“You can't summon angels with the devil's telephone.”
― J.M. McDermott, Tales from a Talking Board