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

“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

“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

“I doubt they actually care about Cheeks mooning over an outsider. They're just delighting in the fall of the immaculate runner with the angel face the way insects delight in a new carcass. They'll slather themselves in his failure and pretend it's their own success.”
― 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

“You saved me," I say.
"No one else was going to," she says, and I wonder if she knows how special she is. How many people would use no one else is doing it as an excuse not to act, rather than as motivation.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“Places where violence isn't tolerated will never teach you how to deal with it, when it is avoidable, or how to execute it cleanly when you must. You have to accept violence as a part of life to know it, to tame it like a pet, to keep it in your pocket and understand when to let it out. There's nothing you can tell me about the right way to bruise flesh if your only rule is don't.”
― 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

“This is how we can peacefully coexist, the only way, when one entity doesn’t hold the existence of the other in its firm grasp.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall

“You should know they don’t discourage drug use here. Let your provider know if you don’t want it around you, and they’ll do their best.” His surprise is genuine, and I try not to be insulted by it. “I thought this place was about wellness?” “It is. 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.” It’s a line straight out of Exlee’s mouth, but it’s one of my favorites. 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

“Wanting to shift someone's boundaries is a burden and a threat, not a gift or a compliment.”
― Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall