“I followed him up the stairs. I was a fornicator, of unnatural appetite, in thrall to an Atheist. I repeated the words in my head and tried to feel the shock of them, but they remained strange and cruel, far removed from Ferris and me. It was simpler to say I was in love.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“Speak to me, Jacob, do not play the tyrant.
Speak to me.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“I wondered at him, so wise and so foolish, to have lived with me all these months and not know that the worst storms break inside a man.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“But what virtue I do have is in me and of me. Men deny the good that comes from themselves, calling it God. So do they with their won evil, calling it the Devil.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“Are you afraid of dying, Ferris?'
'I'm afraid of not living.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“The Devil had granted my wish to watch him sleep, but granted it in his usual cruel fashion, making a pain of a pleasure. Yet pleasure there was. I still desired to watch over him, be his dragon against Botts.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“You talked once of bodily dignity.’
‘I’ve seen heads shot off.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“Why did You bid me drown the letter? I have lost something that he touched, and the destruction of it has gained You nothing, for now I no longer read the words, I hear them, as if he implored me face to face. Speak to me, Jacob, do not play the tyrant. Speak to me.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“I dig and plough at your command,' I replied, 'but you will not tell me how to shit.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“Sin is our condition," I said.
"Say rather that love is our rightful condition."
"You talk like--you are a good man! But how can you be good without God?"
He grinned. "Not so good, neither. But what virtue I do have is in me and of me. Men deny the good that comes from themselves, calling it God. So they do with their own evil, calling it the Devil."
I tried to see how this might be.
"There is no Hell, Jacob."
"And the Bible?"
"Was written by men like ourselves."
He was frightening. At the idea of there being no Hell I had felt a breath of something like freedom, but it was illusion. I marvelled at his foolhardiness, feared it, and loved it.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“How did men make themselves loved, I wondered. I had passed all my life with men who were loved but I seemed never to have learnt the lesson.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“Whatever makes a man a beast also renders him pitiable. But it behoves us to be wary of these bestial men despite our compassion, for they frequently turn on their friends.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“Violent love eats up what it does love, and it is mere appetite. I scribbled on the bottom of this before sending it back: I would sooner cut my own flesh than do you a hurt. You should not have tried to get between us! But only come to see me, and another time I will stand and let me beat to a mummy.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“I mean that repeated offences, even when they secure forgiveness, drive out love. And from that I came to say that one may compel obedience but never love.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“Quiet. My body melted heavily into the chair; I heard a cart go up the street. The room grew suddenly big with meaning. Something was about to happen, was happening: each object in the room seemed perfect of its kind, its kind being just its one self. The moment split into Eternity and I went with it: I had neither skin nor bones, but flowed into the world, sacred along with everything else, and was lost.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“Behold,' said the Voice, 'earthly beauty. It is nothing but seeming, for to the uninstructed eye the world appears fruitful and sweet, yet in it is nothing but a pile of skulls, showing where others were lost as they went before.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“I wondered how many times I would be told 'Be joyous' before I died. Can a man arrange the sorrows and joys of his life to the Christian calendar?”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“I pictured Becs and myself together, squabbling, but always over little things, while I rotted away at the core from love of Ferris.
It was hopeless.
‘Here.’ I laid my hands on the table, palms up, and jerked my head at them, ‘put yours on top.’
Ferris did not move.
‘Please,’ I said.
He laid his cold hands on mine and I curled my fingers, folding his within them.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘I’ve neither accepted nor refused. Speak it out plainly, tell me and I’ll do it.’
He cried, ‘Don’t put it onto me! Choose for yourself.’
‘This is choosing. Tell Aunt I will do whatever you’ll have me do, and that’s my answer.’ I kept hold of his fingers. We stayed there silent and motionless for some time, while the candles burnt down.
At last he said quietly, ‘It is a lot to give up.’
‘Well. My history is bad enough without bigamy,’ I replied, at which he smiled but made no reply. The candles were half burnt. I took one and rose.
‘Goodnight, Ferris.’
‘Goodnight, Jacob.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“Will you still walk with me?’
‘Would you walk with a bad angel?”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“All I could do was to hold on tight to the sides of the chair, and keep myself from sucking his fingers. ‘Would”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“Violent love eats up what it does love, and is mere appetite.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“I took up the letter. On seeing the first line I knew it directly, but could not hold back from reading the whole thing, not once but many times, for it was the only love letter I had received in my life.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“God cuts out our path, makes a groove in the clay with His finger, and we poor blind ants slide down into it.”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
“I studied the shape of my friend’s hands, and how he clasped them. I could smell his skin and hair in the cold air of the church, and stood aching, my face a devout mask stretched over a rotten soul. On”
― Maria McCann, quote from As Meat Loves Salt
Maria McCann
Born place: Liverpool, England, The United Kingdom
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“He interrupted me more frequently and summarized my complaints in an increasingly optimistic light. I couldn't see or feel these changes myself, but Dr. Fish was confident, and I half believed him. The truth is that I participated in the deception. I was studying for my oral exams then, and I was desperate for the treatments to work.”
― Siri Hustvedt, quote from The Blindfold
“Shyly Nancy and Plum sat down at the table while Mrs. Campbell heaped pink-flowered plates with baked beans, sausage cakes ad salad, passed a steaming plate of brown bread, cut them off generous pieces of the pat of new butter and handed them big mugs of ice-cold milk.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum
“Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices.”
― Ayn Rand, quote from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
“Fern’s hair was another source of embarrassment for the Drudgers.”
― quote from The Anybodies
“In other words, the man who is dejected and disquieted and miserable, who is unhappy and depressed always shows it in his face. He looks troubled and he looks worried. You take one glance at him and you see his condition. Yes, says the Psalmist in effect, but when I really look at God, as I get better, my face gets better also—‘He is the health of my countenance’.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, quote from Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure
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