N.k. Jemisin Quotes

Did you know that writing stories down kills them?Of course it does, words aren't meant to be stiff, unchanging things.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Determination could easily become obsession.

~ N.k. Jemisin

We worship Him not because He is the best of our gods, but because He is, or was, the greatest killer among them.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Fear of a bully, fear of a volcano; the power within you does not distinguish. It does not recognize degree.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Funny thing, employment. If you keep doing it, you keep getting paid.

~ N.k. Jemisin

You must remember, though, that most normal people have never seen an orogene, let alone had to do business with one, and—” She spreads her hands. “Isn’t it understandable that we might be… uncomfortable?” “Discomfort is understandable. It’s the rudeness that isn’t.” Rust this. This woman doesn’t deserve the effort of her explanation. Syen decides to save that for someone who matters. “And that’s a really shitty apology. ‘I’m sorry you’re so abnormal that I can’t manage to treat you like a human being.

~ N.k. Jemisin

If the first words out of your mouth are to cry ‘political correctness!’, … chances are very, very high that you are in fact part of the problem.

~ N.k. Jemisin

If the gods do decide to wipe us out, is it such a bad thing? Maybe we've earned a little annihilation.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Urgency and despair don't get along well.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Being useful to others is not the same thing as being equal.

~ N.k. Jemisin

I definitely haven’t been in the best place while working on this book, but I can say this much: Where there is pain in this book, it is real pain; where there is anger, it is real anger; where there is love, it is real love. You’ve been taking this journey with me, and you’re always going to get the best of what I’ve got. That’s what my mother would want.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Once upon a time there was aOnce upon a time there was aOnce upon a time there was aStop this. It's undignified.

~ N.k. Jemisin

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I’ve heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures’ myths, and maybe that was true. I don’t know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don’t have enough myths of our own, we’ll latch onto those of others — even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it’s human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Rising from the dead? Glowing at sunrise? What did that make him, the god of cheerful mornings and macabre surprises?

~ N.k. Jemisin

It was said that the gods favored fools because they were entertaining to watch.

~ N.k. Jemisin

It was very bad if the council had resorted to recruiting men. By tradition men were our last line of defence, their physical strength bent towards the single and most important task of protecting our homes and children. This meant the council had decided that our only defence was to defeat the enemy, period. Anything else meant the end of Darre.

~ N.k. Jemisin

He was dead again when I got home that day. His corpse was in the kitchen, near the counter, where it appeared he'd been chopping vegetables when the urge to stab himself through the wrist had struck. I slipped on the blood coming in, which annoyed me because that meant it was all over the kitchen floor.

~ N.k. Jemisin

She has seen him fight his own brutal nature, and the Earth itself, in order to be the parent she needs. He has helped her learn to love herself for what she is.

~ N.k. Jemisin

The priest's lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal's doom. My grandmother's lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Only learning oneself better, and understanding one’s place in the world, made the touch of another mundane.

~ N.k. Jemisin

The children of the Fulcrum are all different: different ages, different colors, different shapes. Some speak Sanze-mat with different accents, having originated from different parts of the world. One girl has sharp teeth because it is her race's custom to file them; another boy has no penis, though he stuffs a sock into his underwear after every shower; another girl has rarely had regular meals and wolfs down every one like she's still starving. (The instructors keep finding food hidden in and around her bed. They make her eat it, all of it, in front of them, even if it makes her sick.) One cannot reasonably expect sameness out of so much difference, and it makes no sense for Damaya to be judged by the behavior of children who share nothing save the curse of orogeny with her.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Her eyes are shockingly black - shocking not because black eyes are particularly rare, but because she's wearing smoky gray eyeshadow and dark eyeliner to accentuate them further. Makeup, while the world is ending.

~ N.k. Jemisin