Home > Author > Jamaal May
1 " ...I don't knowif it's better to be good at a bad job or bad at a good job,but there must be some kind of satisfactionin doing a job so poorly, you are never asked to do it again....I learned that I'd work any job this hard, achelike this to know that I could always ache for something.There's a hell for people like uswhere we shovel the coal we have mined ourselvesinto furnaces that burn the flesh from our bonesnightly, and we never miss a shift. "
― Jamaal May , The Big Book of Exit Strategies
2 " I need your teeth in me, slow and vicious, to tell me my armor is just skin, bones, only bones. "
― Jamaal May , The Whetting of Teeth
3 " You are quarter ghost on your mother’s side.Your heart is a flayed peach in a bone box.Your hair comes away in clumps like cheap fabric wet.A reflecting pool gathers around your altarof plywood sub flooring and split wooden slats.You are rag doll prone. You are contort,angle and arc. Here you rot. Hereyou are a greening abdomen, slipping skin,flesh fly, carrion beetles.This is where bullets take shelter,where scythes find their function, breath losesits place on the page. This is where the page is tornout of every book before chapter’s close,this is slippage, this is a shroud of neglectpulled over the body, thisis your chance to escape. Little wraith,bend light around your skin until it colors you clear,disappear like silica in a kiln, becomeglass and glass beads, becomethe staggered whir of an exhaust fan:something only noticedwhen gone. Becomean origami swan. Fold yourself smallerthan ever before. Become less. Morein some ways but lessin the way a famine is less. They willforgive you for not being satisfiedwith fitting in their hands.They will forgive youfor dying to bea bird diminutive enoughto fit in a mouth and not be crushed. "
― Jamaal May
4 " I kept fiddling with my phone through dinnerbecause I was fascinatedthat every time I tried to type love,I missed the o and hit i instead.I live you is a mistake I make so often,I wonder if it’s notwhat I’ve been really meaning to say. "
― Jamaal May , Hum
5 " I write because I love you enoughto ask for what is terrible: run fartherthan your feet can possibly carry your heart.I love you enough to confess that you will failbut fail closer to the finish linethan if you lie down when the start guns fires.And in this way, you will never failto be an arch, stepping-stone, bridgeof bone and intellect,of guts and song. Lookhow lively the children step.Let's nod our heads to their footfalls.Become backbeat with meand they will sing the harmonicswe forgot to learn.Tell me you wouldn't die for that.Tell me you will live for this. "
6 " She's not "maternal", she's dangerous "