Those Beyond the Wall Quotes

“I let my head fall, my mouth and nose against the place where the skin of his forehead meets the thick black of his hair, and I inhale deeply, deep enough to embed the smell of him into my lungs like a cancer that I hope kills me, or at least is still with me on the day that I die. Because it's my last chance. I know he will never let me near him again.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“It's easy to feel loss—to focus on it, to mourn it—if it's just one. Too much missing? All those absences, all stacked up? That's just night. How can you tell the shadows apart when there's so much darkness?”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“I held her together. She insisted on breaking apart. I held her harder. But then I was just breaking her too. Sometimes when you want to fix something too bad, you break it. The way you can shatter metal if you get it too hot, even if all you're trying to do is mend a crack.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“remind myself that wanting to shift someone else’s boundaries is a burden and a threat, not a gift or a compliment.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“It feels good to criticize others into the ground when we are right and we know they are wrong. But it's not good, it's righteous, and the two seldom have anything to do with each other.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“Your name was Terrick. You had your mother's smile, and everyone who saw it loved you," I say to the mass sitting on the black tarp beside me as I tag it for the family. What I say to this corpse is true. I know it's true because I know his mother. But I've been fudging for others, trying to give them some story to find themselves, because in this state their flesh won't guide them anywhere clearly.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“Fifteen years ago it wouldn't have been a joke. It would have been a barely masked insecurity. But insecurity is a young girl's game and somewhere along the way I got to building exactly the kind of life I want, and those old concerns slipped away. If I got three wishes now I wouldn't use a single one on my appearance. If I'd gotten those wishes as a teenager? Would've wasted every one.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“For some people, wellness is a little oblivion. If someone wants to use it to destroy themselves, better to figure out why they want to disappear than just make sure they never hold a blade again.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“The House raised me, so I'm indifferent to drug use. Like anything else that doesn't deliberately hurt others, it's morally neutral here. Lots of people use with no harm done to themselves or others. Those that do harm themselves, well, I understand how strong the urge to self-destruct can be, no matter what form it takes. But I've seen it in people who lift or run until they're nothing, people who love only those that hurt them, people who spend their pay so quick it's like they want to starve—not just those who tap their veins looking for a way out. They all have the same thing in common: You can't solve any craving for excess by stopping the act. You've got to solve what made them need, which is a separate thing entirely. Need can make any act harmful. Even love.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“What you're experiencing now is grief," Jax says. "No. I wouldn't—" "Not for the person. For the feeling of having someone to hate. You had a burning core keeping you going, and the first thing you feel when it goes out is cold." I nod, wondering how they could have known about the creeks of dry ice my veins had become since I began processing the news. "But that fire was killing you, Scales. Its absence opens up potential. It's a hole that you can fill with anything in the world now. Choose wisely.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“Stories are powerful, and none are more powerful than the ones you let others tell you about yourself.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“This is what every feel-good story about these fucks misses. Yeah, there are nice people in enforcement, but it's not about numbers, it's about policy and policy always sides with the assholes. The ones they call bad are the ones who actually follow orders and department culture. Every nice thing the other guy does is an aberration that people use as an example of why they should exist. I remember the city getting all smiles over a story of an enforcement officer who found an Ashtowner—not a runner, just an exiled civilian—in the city and gave them a blanket and some hot cocoa. People praised the uniform for doing something that wasn't policy, wasn't even common. But policy never changed, so the kid was kicked back out into the desert to starve. Kind officers are just the exceptions that ensure the rule goes on.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“I know how it sounds. Like I'm shoving a knife in my own chest so I won't risk cutting him. Maybe I am. But if I'm going to choke on poison by my own hand, you can at least let me congratulate myself on how well I take it. It's a cold consolation, but that's the only kind I'm likely to get.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“I know what you're thinking. You're seeing someone in love and you want it to become a love story. Stop. Being in love with someone doesn't entitle you to them; wanting someone doesn't obligate them to want you back.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“You say, A man named Diamond Jones died trying to eat a mountain and that's why there's a crater in the wastes. And someone says, Actually, I checked, and there's never been a man named Diamond Jones or According to his obituary Diamond Jones died from cancer, not mountain-eating. But if you say, Once—once and only once, because dates are as bad as names for stories—a man loved the ground so much he ate a mountain and it killed him but it killed the mountain too, people will learn from the story without truth getting in the way. They'll learn that to love something is to open wide and hope what you love is digestible. They'll learn that if you love so much you consume the thing you love whole, neither of you will survive and neither will your love. They'll learn not to eat fucking rocks.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“If Wiley City cares about nature, they must only care about the right kind. They must only care if the nature is pretty, or serves them. They must only care if the nature makes them feel good about themselves, or if caring makes them look good to others. And they must only care if the nature got here the way they wanted it, by them planting it, not by it coming naturally or preexisting them in this space. Basically, if Wiley City cares about nature, it's in the same conditional way it cares about us.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“It didn't matter which version was true. They were all real. Stories should never be believed, but they should always be trusted.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“I've got vices in spades but ambition's not one of them.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“When the urge to ruin his peace gets too tempting, I remind myself not to be selfish; I remind myself that wanting to shift someone else's boundaries is a burden and a threat, not a gift or a compliment.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“I wasn't clumsy.
I wasn't.
They told people I was clumsy, and told me I was clumsy, but really they were just unwilling to make room for a child that acted like anything but an adult.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“While bitterness is an isolator, a repellent to community, Rage is a beacon calling out to others. It is as much a communal invitation as any bonfire. Come join me, Rage says, at this spark that is lit by the distance between what the world is, and what we could make it.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“Bitterness is anger with nowhere to go. Bitterness and resignation are close and tempting cousins. Anger with a target is Rage, and Rage is sister to Hope alone. We rage because we do believe things can be better, by fire if necessary ...While bitterness is an isolator, a repellent to community, Rage is a beacon calling out to others. It is as much a communal invitation as any bonfire.

Come join me, Rage says, at this spark that is lit by the distance between what the world is, and what we could make it ... The night is long and dark, Rage says, but I will keep us warm.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“I think back to when we first met, all that chaos ago, in his low-level apartment. I'd wondered then if he had anything to live for, but that wasn't what he lacked. He was looking for something to die for.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“The oldest way to beat the dark: Shine the light of truth upon it.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“I was dead set on Adam being evil, because I've been looking for a villain this whole time. Every story needs a villain, especially one with as many dead as this tale has.
I just didn't know it was going to be me.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“It's been ages since I've thought of a future, any future, with Cheeks. But it might have been. Maybe in a year, maybe in a decade, maybe when we were both old and gray at the end, it might have been. Having all those possibilities close off all at once is like having a cluster of stars wink out: It may not materially change anything, but I'll always know my world is darker now than it could have been.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“He is injured as bad as he's ever been, and, for once, I will not be the one tending to him. I am more devastated than I've been in years, and he will not be the one comforting me. He stares at my face, taking in the signs that I'm trying not to cry like he's trying to decide if he cares.
He doesn't.
Our friendship ends when, and because, he looks away.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“I wipe the back of my hand across my mouth like I've been devouring messy prey. No, not prey. It doesn't feel like I've killed something I was meant to kill. It feels like I've committed cannibalism but closer. Hurting him feels like devouring pieces of myself.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“With the first blow, the flat of my fist against the fleshiest part of his middle, I say, Your hair was short when we first met.
With the second, placed just to the side of the first, hard enough to qualify as punishment but close enough he won’t feel it as an entirely separate pain, I say, I was so afraid of you then, you knew so much and I knew so little.
When I go for the face, I won’t use my hands. I’m too good with them. I make it look to the crowd like it is the hard edge of my knee risking a break to his perfect mouth but it’s just the flat plane of my thigh, and it’s only the widest part of his chin. The concession tells him, You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. You are perfect. If I could have made you love me back, I would have been able to love myself forever.
After that, every blow just tells him I love him. I say, I love you, with a boot to the thigh. I say, I love you, with a rib kick that was more side of the foot than toe. I say, I love you, with a backhand. He moves onto his back, wheezing, so I straddle him and tap love out on his ribs until I’m worried they’ve cracked; then I switch to his collarbones because right now love means not giving him a punctured lung. And when the cracked and red skin of my knuckles meets his red-coated teeth, my blood against his bones and his blood against mine, that is when I love him most.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. You are perfect. If I could have made you love me back, I would have been able to love myself forever.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall