Kameron Hurley Quotes & Sayings

It was strange how you didn't realise how much you loved a place until you had lost it completely. — Kameron Hurley

Nyx had finished off a fifth of vodka for breakfast, since she'd sworn off whiskey. — Kameron Hurley

Nyx had killed a lot of people. She'd let even more die through neglect. Rhys was just one more. I'm the same person, aren't I? she thought. She had burned herself up, only to come out the other side exactly the same.

Taite's signal would get out, Nyx knew. It would be soon enough to save *her*.

But it would not be soon enough for Rhys.

Nyx hardened her jaw. Her hands and feet were still tied. They'd stripped her of her most obvious weapons. She could just wait this out.

She saw Rhys register that. But there was no shock. Just resignation. He knew her for what she was.

Butcher. Monster.

The same old monster. — Kameron Hurley

But I am a great pretender, sometimes so good at it that I convince myself that what I pretend is what is truly real. — Kameron Hurley

I'm not going to tell you how to start a bug-powered vehicle, I'm just going to put you inside one with somebody who knows how, and send you off on a ride. — Kameron Hurley

The world could burn around her, the cities turn to dust, the cries of a hundred thousand fill the air, and she would get up after the fire died and walk barefoot and burned over the charred soil in search of clean water, a weapon, a purpose. She would rebuild. — Kameron Hurley

It will be like that until someone decides to change it. All of it. But how did you change an entire culture? Revolutions were about politics, not perceptions, weren't they? — Kameron Hurley

When we were too frightened to save our own people, we murdered others. — Kameron Hurley

Good luck to you," he said, and she remembered how he had looked at her as she pinned Yah Tayyib, as if she was some kind of monster.

Maybe she was. — Kameron Hurley

This trip just went from fucked up to totally fucking crazy shit. — Kameron Hurley

He recited, "My mother was a bird of fire. She bore me swaddled over the ruined cities of my sisters. We rained a sea of flame upon our brother, and brought them aloft again. Transformed. Our mothers burned the cities. We keep the ruins. — Kameron Hurley

I have spent my life battling monsters. It was only in realizing that I was the monster, and choosing to destroy her, that I could save the world. — Kameron Hurley

Your haters are not here for a conversation. They are here to keep you from doing your work. — Kameron Hurley

Light doesn't always keep the dark things away, Nyx said. — Kameron Hurley

What if they'd brought some weapon with them, or are launching an assault on the Mokshi right now? How can you or her trust people who are no better than bandits?" I gaze at the human skin stretched over the table. Zan follows my look and quiets. "We are all villains here," I say. — Kameron Hurley

Because you may find yourself in a very bad position, Rohinmey," Dasai said. "If things go wrong, I do not want you to fight. I want you to live. — Kameron Hurley

Women in Nasheen didn't grow up looking for husbands. They grew up looking for honor and glory. — Kameron Hurley

Nobody really knows what I am," Nyx said. "Not until I put a bullet in their head. — Kameron Hurley

I knew that no matter how hard I worked, no matter how good I became, it didn't guarantee success or recognition. Other people were not going to be better - they were going to get ahead because of who they knew, because of how much money they had, or because they were willing to lie and cheat their way to recognition. — Kameron Hurley

Being fucked up is fine so long as you compensate for it. — Kameron Hurley

And there is good money to be made when things are bad. — Kameron Hurley

All I am, and all I love, is war. I don't know who I will be if I stop. The world, if it is to survive, needs a leader, not a warmonger. The world I want to make does not require me — Kameron Hurley

Most people who watch a fight think it's all about the muscle: hitting harder, moving faster. And, yeah, sometimes it looked that way. But telling somebody that you won a fight by hitting the other person harder and more often was like telling somebody that the way you kept from drowning was by moving your arms and legs. — Kameron Hurley

This is the power and promise of science fiction, this magic of creating and living in every possible future. — Kameron Hurley

We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative — Kameron Hurley

Come on now," Arankadash says, "I'm halfway through my pregnancy and you don't see me whining about it." "I thought there weren't any child-bearers in your settlement," I say. "Didn't say I was pregnant with a child," Arankadash says. "Most people don't give birth to children. We give birth to things the world needs." She gestured expansively to the ruins around us. "The world always needs bits and pieces of itself to be reborn. That's why we're here. — Kameron Hurley

Nyx was a lot of things, but forgettable wasn't one of them. — Kameron Hurley

It all came apart once you started caring for something outside yourself. — Kameron Hurley

That was a very formidable woman," Caisa said.
"I seem to know a good many of those."
"And you have a terrible habit of angering them," she said. — Kameron Hurley

I spent a great deal of my ilfe trying to be quiet and nice and not piss anyone off. I was misereable. It served no purpose. And they still came for me. It made me even easier to dismiss, to overlook, to assume I was just somebody else everybody could roll over and spout off ridiculously sexist, racist crap without dissent.
But nodding and smiling gets old. It makes it easier for people to box you up and ship you off, I'm only really alive when I'm pissing people off anyway — Kameron Hurley

Rumour has it you've turned castration into an occupation."
"You go cutting one guy's cock off and you never hear the end of it," Nyx said. — Kameron Hurley

Everything hurt. It meant she was alive. — Kameron Hurley

All you do is learn how to fight a war," Nyx said. "Nobody ever teaches you how to stop. — Kameron Hurley

You started caring about somebody, you did stupid things. — Kameron Hurley

Take me there. Or is this a kidnapping? Don't confuse rescue and kidnapping. I have not asked to be rescued. — Kameron Hurley

Systems of racism and sexism and oppression are not systems we choose, but they are ones we inherit and are responsible for perpetuating, or not. When I hear so-and-so was "a product of his/her time" as an excuse for bigoted behavior, I remind folks that there have always been people in every time who did not agree with the bigoted systems they were born into and who actively fought them. The question is, which are we? — Kameron Hurley

The dagger strapped to her thigh, the pistol strapped to the opposite calf, the three poisoned needles she kept in her hair. He noted she kept the garroting wire she used to tie her sandals, but she pulled out the razor blades tucked into the soles. — Kameron Hurley

When I was sixteen, I wrote an essay about why women should remain barred from combat in the U.S. military. I found it recently while going through some old papers. My argument for why women shouldn't be in combat was because war was terrible, and families were important, and with all these men dying in war, why would we want women to die, too?
That was my entire argument.
"Women shouldn't go to war because, like men do now, they would die there."
I got an "A. — Kameron Hurley

Just keep in mind," Liaro said, "they're not going to remember the words. They'll remember how you made them feel. Make them feel something. — Kameron Hurley

We finally got around to processing the Queen's request to reinstate your bel dame status," Fatima said.
"What, twelve years later?"
"Bel dames are not known for the efficiency of their paper pushing. — Kameron Hurley

The wall? What's the wall?" Nyx asked.
The woman told him. Ahmed translated, "The end of the world."
"Well, that's fitting," Nyx said.
"It does sound promising," Ahmed said. — Kameron Hurley

Nobody knows anybody. We're all working on blind faith. — Kameron Hurley

Lilia did not believe in miracles outside of history books, but she was beginning to believe in her own power, and that was a more frightening thing to believe in. — Kameron Hurley

Anything less than the desert was a dream. — Kameron Hurley

Men did not like women to weep. It reminded them of their own failings. — Kameron Hurley

Life was what you did with what was done to you. — Kameron Hurley

We can pretend all we like that women are equal, ut as long as men and women are continually encouraged to supress the broad aspects of their humanity that we decry as "feminine", we're all screwed.
Because it's those things qe celebrate as "other" that make us truly human. It's what we label "soft" or "feminune" that makes civilization possible, It's our empathy, our ability to care and nurtureand connect. It's our ability to come together. To buld. To remake. Asking men to cut away their "feminine" traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to supress ther "masculine" traits asks them to deny their full autonomy. — Kameron Hurley

CONTROL OF FECUNDITY IS SOMETHING EVERY WOMAN WANTS, AND EACH BELIEVES IS HER BIRTHRIGHT. THE WORLDS HAVE OTHER IDEAS, AND IT EVENTUALLY LED TO THEIR DESTRUCTION." - LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION — Kameron Hurley

What is love anyway but a hunger no meal can satisfy? — Kameron Hurley

Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert.
Drunk, but no longer bleeding, she pushed into a smoky cantina just after dark and ordered a pinch of morphine and a whiskey chaser. She bet all of her money on a boxer named Jaks, and lost it two rounds later when Jaks hit the floor like an antique harem girl. — Kameron Hurley

If you think there's a thing - anything - women didn't do in the past, you're wrong. — Kameron Hurley

I had no idea what to say to this. I had been nurtured in the U.S. school system on a steady diet of the Great Men theory of history. History was full of Great Men. I had to take separate Women's History courses just to learn about what women were doing while all the men were killing each other. It turned out many of them were governing countries and figuring out rather effective methods of birth control that had sweeping ramifications on the makeup of particular states, especially Greece and Rome.
Half the world is full of women, but it's rare to hear a narrative that doesn't speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man's daughter. A man's wife. — Kameron Hurley

You going to fuck her or kill her?" Anneke asked when Nyx sent Mercia off with her bodyguards. "You never look that close unless it's one or the other. — Kameron Hurley

We have one shot at this," Zezili said, "so don't fuck it up." Looking at the filthy, scar-faced girl next to her, Zezili suspected all the girl ever did was fuck up. — Kameron Hurley

There is no place for you in this new world," Fatima said.
"That's what I'm hoping," said Nyx. "If you had any goddamn sense, you'd hope so too. — Kameron Hurley

I'm a bloodletter, not a politician," Nyx said. "I just take off heads. — Kameron Hurley

You don't understand," Bakira called after the councilwoman. "There are no options for me. None. You have taken all of them. I know what we are here. You say Nasheen is ruled by God and Queen, but it is not. It is ruled by rich, blind, First Family women like you who wish to divide and conquer us. I see what you made us, and I reject it. We are not just the bloody afterbirth, the mess you leave behind as you claw your way to prominence. We are hum beings, as good as you. Better. I know we can build something better. — Kameron Hurley

When Lilia was four years old, her mother filled a shallow dish with Lilia's blood and fed it to the boars that patrolled the thorn fence. — Kameron Hurley

I'd internalized an astonishing amount of misogyny growing up that I didn't even recognize until my early twenties. — Kameron Hurley

If it wasn't the Tai Mora, who would we fight? Ourselves? The Dhai? The Dorinah? Always another face, always the same face. — Kameron Hurley

I'm not trying to be mean,' Casamir says.
'Intent doesn't always matter. — Kameron Hurley

What does it matter, if we tell the same old stories? ... Stories tell us who we are. What we're capable of. When we go out looking for stories we are, I think, in many ways going in search of ourselves, trying to find understanding of our lives, and the people around us. Stories, and language tell us what's important. — Kameron Hurley

How many men had made her? Her brothers, by dying? Yah Tayyib, by rebuilding her? All those dead boys whose heads she brought back to the clerks? Raine, by teaching her how to drive and how to die? Tej and Rhys and Khos and all Raine's half-breed muscle? They were just men. They were just people. They had made her as surely as Queen Ayyad and Queen Zaynab, Bashir, Jaks, Radeyah, and her sisters had. Her hoards of sistesr, Kine and the bel dames and the women who kicked her out of school for getting her letters fucked. No, she could have gone either way; followed all or none of them. It wasn't what was done to you. Life was what you did with what was done to you.
"You didn't make me," Nyx gasped. "I made myself. — Kameron Hurley

All you have to decide, as they say, is what you do with the time given. — Kameron Hurley

Human beings are, if nothing else, dedicated to upholding their narrative of the way the world is supposed to be, whether or not that world ever truly existed. — Kameron Hurley

The monsters don't live in the belly of the world like they all say. The monsters live inside of us. We make the monsters. — Kameron Hurley

The motto above the lintel of the main entrance was in the raised script of the prayer language: My life for a thousand.

She remembered swearing an oath with that at its core: My life for yours, for ours, for Nasheen. My life for a thousand. — Kameron Hurley

I love birds. I love to cage them, you see, because when you first do it, they fight so terribly hard. They are so alive, so defiant. I measure how long it takes for them to lose their spirit. To stop fighting. To resign themselves to their fate ... They all give up, eventually. They are all in a cage, you see. There is no way out. — Kameron Hurley

Nyx had to admit she had a soft spot for plain folks. There was something to be said for finding beauty in the rough. — Kameron Hurley

We all fight monsters, she knew. There was no shame in losing. — Kameron Hurley

Stories teach us empathy, and limiting the expression of humanity in our heroes entirely based on sex or gender does us all a disservice. It placess restrictions on what we consider human, which dehumanizes the people we see who do not express traits that fit our narow definition of what's acceptable. — Kameron Hurley

What were all of them, really, but bits of something else? Bits of stars? — Kameron Hurley

We aren't going to win," Roh said. "No," Luna said, "but we're going to live. — Kameron Hurley

I've bled and fucked and died for this country, Nyx said. — Kameron Hurley

The war had remade her. Reshaped her purpose. Why couldn't she unmake it again? — Kameron Hurley

There is nothing I fear more than someone without memory. A person without memory is free to do anything she likes. — Kameron Hurley

Asking men to cut away their "feminine" traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to suppress their "masculine" traits asks them to deny their full autonomy.
What makes us human is not one or the other - the fist or the open palm - it's our ability to embrace both, and choose the appropriate action for the situation we're in. Because to deny one half - to burn down the world or refuse to defend the world from those who would burn it - is to deny our humanity and become something less than human. — Kameron Hurley

We kill a few people to stop a lot of people dying," Nyx said. "Wars kill a lot of people to keep a few people rich. — Kameron Hurley

When you understand what the world is, you have two choices: Become a part of that world and perpetuate that system forever and ever, unto the next generation. Or fight it, and break it, and build something new. The former is safer, and easier. The latter is scarier, because who is to say what you build will be any better? — Kameron Hurley

The sand has rules. Fucked up rules, but rules nonetheless. — Kameron Hurley

Nyx rubbed the ointment onto her new, darker skin. She was nearly as dark as Suha now. She supposed it would protect her from more cancers, but it was funny-looking. At least her face was the same. At least her face didn't look Chenjan.
I'm never going to get laid again, Nyx thought. — Kameron Hurley

Bel dames spent most of their time running after criminals in dingy, unfiltered cities, making enemies with other bel dames whose notes they stole, girlfriends they fucked, and sons they killed. — Kameron Hurley

Her body sometimes amazed her. She could keep going long after she couldn't. — Kameron Hurley

Someone had to fight the monsters. Who better than a monster? — Kameron Hurley

I remember throwing away a child. — Kameron Hurley

What folks don't realize, I think, is that very often "good" just means "competent." I — Kameron Hurley

I'm afraid," I say, and that is partly the truth. I am afraid of what I am going to have to do to this person who claims she is my sister, but who I want to take into my arms and fuck until the world ends. — Kameron Hurley

At the end of the world, the war was going to come down to throwing stones. — Kameron Hurley

Ahmed turned, and leaned into him. Kissed him on the mouth again.
"I'm pretty fucked up," Eshe said.
"It's a good thing I'm perfect, then. — Kameron Hurley

There was a fine line between madness and intelligence. — Kameron Hurley

You're scaring the help," Rhys said. He watched her now with his dark eyes.
"I scare a lot of people," Nyx said. — Kameron Hurley

Reality TV does actually have a message, folks. That message is selling and reinforcing capitalism, ignorance, and the status quo. — Kameron Hurley

Humanity is a monster you can never kill. — Kameron Hurley

The secret to leadership is not to be a particularly intelligent person. It is to surround oneself with those far smarter than oneself. And try not to kill them. — Kameron Hurley

She is equal parts manic brutality and strategic fuckery. — Kameron Hurley

Nyx did what she always did after she shot a terrorist or garrotted a deserter. She carried on. — Kameron Hurley

We all want a good many things, child, but it doesn't mean we get them, — Kameron Hurley

Let's be real: if women were "naturally" anything, societies wouldn't spend so much time trying to police every aspect of their lives — Kameron Hurley

The world is full of people who write poorly but passionately, and others who can put a sentence together but have no feeling behind it. All they have in common is that they don't give up when people say they're talentless hacks. And both of those types of writers have audiences. — Kameron Hurley

He picked up her gun. Pointed it at her. Pulled the trigger.
Isabet jumped like a startled lizard.
He handed the gun back to her. 'First tip. Get a new gun. As soon as a Ras Tiegan gun gets sand in it, it's useless. They don't work out here.'
Isabet's hand was trembling as she took the gun back. 'You seemed very certain of that.'
'Nyx unloaded it while we were arguing,' he said. 'If you want to keep up, you'll need to start paying attention. — Kameron Hurley