Best 96 quotes of N. K. Jemisin on MyQuotes

And in that sliver of time, I felt the power around me coalesce, malice-hard and sharp as crystal. That this analogy occurred to me should have been a warning.

...and when I lift my head to scream out my fury, a million stars turn black and die. No one can see them, but they are my tears.

But love like that doesn't just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always a little love left, underneath. Yes. Horrible, isn't it?

But when I got angry, my nerves sought an outlet, and my mouth didn't always guard the gates.

Calling something exotic emphasizes its distance from the reader. We don't refer to things as exotic if we think of them as ordinary. We call something exotic if it's so different that we see no way to emulate it or understand how it came to be. We call someone exotic if we aren't especially interested in viewing them as people - just as objects representing their culture.

Fortunately, where reason failed, blind panic served well enough.

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.

I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore. I must try to remember.

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.

Immortality gets very, very boring. You'd be surprised at how interesting the small mundanities of life can seem after a few millennia.

I'm tired of being what everyone else has made me," I said. "I want to be myself." "Don't be a child." I looked up, startled and angry, though of course there was nothing to see. "What?" "You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I'm tired of your whining.

I remembered Nahadoth's lips on my throat and fought to suppress a shudder, only half succeeding. Death as a consequence of lying with a god wasn't something I had considered, but it did not surprise me. A mortal man's strength had its limits. He spent himself and slept. He could be a good lover, but even his best skills were only guesswork - for every caress that sent a woman's head into the clouds, he might try ten that brought her back to earth.

It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all - but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.

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.

Loneliness is a darkness of the soul

Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.

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

The Cloud Roads has wildly original worldbuilding, diverse and engaging characters, and a thrilling adventure plot. It's that rarest of fantasies: fresh and surprising, with a story that doesn't go where ten thousand others have gone before. I can't wait for my next chance to visit the Three Worlds!

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.

There is no greater warrior than a mother protecting her child.

There is no logic to grief.

The shadows of Ina-Karekh are the place where nightmares dwell, but not their source. Never forget: the shadowlands are not elsewhere. We create them. They are within.

They live forever. But many of them are even more lonely and miserable than we are. Why do you think they bother with us? We teach them life's value.

We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.

You are Insignificant. One of millions, neither special nor unique. I did not ask for this ignominy, and I resent the comparison. Fine. I don't you like you, either.

You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I tire of your whining.

And Mother does not hate her; actually, she fears Damaya. Is there a difference? Maybe.

And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow do a disservice to my own reality by paying so much attention to the power fantasies of disenchanted white men? But. Epic fantasy is not merely what Tolkien made it. This genre is rooted in the epic — and the truth is that there are plenty of epics out there which feature people like me. Sundiata’s badass mother. Dihya, warrior queen of the Amazighs. The Rain Queens. The Mino Warriors. Hatshepsut’s reign. Everything Harriet Tubman ever did. And more, so much more, just within the African components of my heritage. I haven’t even begun to explore the non-African stuff. So given all these myths, all these examinations of the possible… how can I not imagine more? How can I not envision an epic set somewhere other than medieval England, about someone other than an awkward white boy? How can I not use every building-block of my history and heritage and imagination when I make shit up? And how dare I disrespect that history, profane all my ancestors’ suffering and struggles, by giving up the freedom to imagine that they’ve won for me.

As this genre finally, however grudgingly, acknowledges that the dreams of the marginalised matter, and that all of us have a future, so will the world.

Because that is how one survives eternity,” I say, “or even a few years. Friends. Family. Moving with them. Moving forward.

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

But for a society build on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.

But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress. And now, if nothing else is done, Syl Anagist must again find a way to fission its people into subgroupings and create reasons for conflict among them. There's not enough magic to be had just from plants and genegineered fauna; someone must suffer, if the rest are to enjoy luxury.

But without love of the self, others' love will never be enough

Complaining about nothing doesn't seem like coping to you, but okay.

Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are show to be, not superior, but simply lucky.

Daddy," she says again, this time putting more of a needy whine into her voice. It is the thing that has swayed him, these times when he has come near to turning on her: remembering that she is his little girl. Reminding him that he has been, up to today, a good father. It is a manipulation. Something of her is warped out of true by this moment, and from now on all her acts of affection toward her father will be calculated, performative. Her childhood dies, for all intents and purposes. But that is better than all of her dying, she knows.

Denying what you are didn't keep people from knowing what you are." "And flaunting it isn't what saved you." Ykka takes a deep breath. The muscles in her jaw flex, relax. "And that would be why I asked you do this, Cutter. But let's move on." So it goes on.

Desperation makes for poor stealth.

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

Don't be patience. Don't ever be. This is the way a new world begins.

Don't be patient. Don't ever be. This is the way a new world begins.

Everyone _shouldn't_ have a say in whose life is worth fighting for.

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

For some of us, things have always been hard, and I wrote the Broken Earth trilogy to speak to that struggle, and what it takes to live, let alone thrive, in a world that seems determined to break you.

Given a choice between death and the barest possibility of acceptance, they were desperate, and we used that. We made them desperate.

He is a beautiful failure.

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.

He smiles with half his mouth and neither of his eyes.

He's not a parasite if she needs him, too, and if she gives what he will not take. (One day soon, she will learn the word symbiosis and nod, pleased to have a name for it at last. But long before that, she will have already decided that family will do.)