J.M. McDermott Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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