13 Quotes by 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I learned that every tree fights for sunlight in the canopy, but this happens so slowly that the combat looks like peace.

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.

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.