Maria McCann Quotes

“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

“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

“Speak to me, Jacob, do not play the tyrant.
Speak to me.”

— Maria McCann

“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

Are you afraid of dying, Ferris?'
'I'm afraid of not living.

— Maria McCann

“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

“I dig and plough at your command,' I replied, 'but you will not tell me how to shit.”

— Maria McCann

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

“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

“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

“There had been a frozen mist here, and the trees were spun into feathers. Their fragile brilliance made me wonder why, into the spotlessness of Creation, God had seen fit to introduce soiling, twisting, rampaging, Man.”

— Maria McCann

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