Someone You Can Build a Nest In Quotes

“No young woman of means has gone through her entire life without at least once surveying her opportunities and wishing for a dragon instead.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“All Shesheshen could do for Homily was be patient with her, and make space for her, and eventually, one day behind her back, eat her mother.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“[...]for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Weaknesses were a human invention. They called it your weakness if they fantasized about murdering you with it.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Romance was awful. She couldn't even murder people anymore.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“I'm not intimidated by books. I would crush them in a fight.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Homily professed her love by digging a second crossbow bolt of Shersheshin's body. It was so much clearer a declaration of affection than any of those speeches spun by poets or playwrights. And stuffed into the mouths of actors who pretended to be enamored. One could only pretend to love in language. True love was a woman sinking up to her elbows in her viscera.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Nobody actually helped each other. That's why people had religions, hoping gods would provide help where people refused.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Shesheshen wrapped her arms around Homily and held her to her chest for a moment, mourning the realization that she'd fallen in love with someone's pain.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“This was the same mistake so many humans made: believing someone would leap over trauma when it hurt them badly enough.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“I do not know what you call it. The thing that is not flesh or bone or organs. In the panic, I needed to make sure the greater things were safe... What do you call that thing that I had to save? I had to save it. I had to save us. You are my safety.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“I know some of your kindness comes from pain. Scabs mistaken for flesh.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Romance was awful. She couldn’t even do something as simple as murdering rude people anymore.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Inside her chest, where humans put their lungs, she placed an open bear trap. It was her prized skeletal possession. It did not trap bears anymore. Instead, she kept it as a secret pair of jaws, for when people needed to be bitten.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“You do not dislike being in love with a puddle?"
Catching her breath, Homily reached for Shesheshen. An offer of consensual touch again.
"I've been a puddle on the floor too many times myself.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Having a nose made Shesheshen immediately feel more human, because it let her do what humans liked most: complain.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“This revelry was a kind of fear, for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“These were emotions she didn't know how to carry. There was the insult of having her death celebrated when she wasn't even dead. When she was, in fact, amidst them all right now, and only out here because they'd sent killers to fail in her home.

But this? To be dying from the poison of those assassins, and while looking for emergency food to survive the injury, to be told by a drunk rich boy with inconvenient hair that she had never really existed? Now their songs made unkind sense to her. This revelry was a kind of fear, for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.

Never had she imagined such a thing. Humans were so creative in their disappointments.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“No,' Shesheshen said. 'Do not let it hurt you. Do not try to prove you are generous by letting yourself be hurt.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Your family shouldn't have built a household out of your pain.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Arguing was the hardest version of talking.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“It was some sort of love. Not the kind of love that made you plant your eggs in someone and turn them into a parent, but a kind of love.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“I do not know what you call it. The thing that is not flesh or bone or organs. In the panic, I needed to make sure the greater things were safe... What do you call that thing that I had to save? I had to save it. I had to save us. You are my safety.

Together they became a comfort she never wanted to leave.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“She was going to have to socialize. Reading what humans wanted from each other was so much easier than when those attentions were directed at her.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“They shrieked in what Shesheshen assumed was another of the consensual oral horrors that humans called music.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“There were no gods in the shrine she passed, at least not visible ones. Gods never showed themselves to humans even when they dumped miracles on them, which Shesheshen thought was wise. If humans got used to the presence of gods, they'd probably hunt them for profit and glory and other nonsense, just as they did to monsters. Gods were smart to keep a light touch.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“How Shesheshen wanted one of the hunters to stop this. For one of them to stand up for common sense, if not for the rights of a young damsel. A damsel who had offered them a perfectly good reason to get lost for a few weeks.

But humans never stood up for the right thing. They stood around feeling uncomfortable, and later pretended that feeling uncomfortable meant they were virtuous. Now Malik stood to one side, only slightly obstructing Wulfyre's path. Surely he'd feel awful about this tomorrow when he was spending his blood money, before running of with his partner to the next kill.

And they called her monstrous.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“This had to be one of those human customs where the humans all knew what was wrong. They put the pieces of their horrible puzzles together automatically, and outcast anybody who could not. How was one supposed to do that?”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“She wasn’t kind because of some angelic virtue. It was insecurity. It was an adaptation to cruelty. Shesheshen wrapped her arms around Homily and held her to her chest for a moment, mourning the realization that she’d fallen in love with someone’s pain.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In

“Time was the sort of thing you had to care about when you belonged to more than yourself.”
― John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In