N.K. Jemisin Quotes & Sayings

Men who served anyone could be trusted by no one. — N.K. Jemisin

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

Embrace love while you have it, priest - from whichever direction it comes, proper or improper, for however long it lasts. Because it always, always comes to an end. — N.K. Jemisin

The body fades. A leader who would last relies on more. — N.K. Jemisin

We must be polite, Syen," he says. He's still smiling, but he's furious; she can tell because he's flashing too many teeth. "We're only orogenes, after all. And this is a member of the Stillness's most esteemed use-caste. We are merely here to wield powers greater than she can comprehend in order to save her region's economy, while she - " He waggles a finger at the woman, not even trying to hide his sarcasm. "She is a pedantic minor bureaucrat. But I'm sure she's a very important pedantic minor bureaucrat. — N.K. Jemisin

Any woman can face the world alone, but why should we have to? — N.K. Jemisin

It's a geode. You can sess that, the way the rock around you abruptly changes to — 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

Of course I was enough, because he loved me. That was the whole point. — N.K. Jemisin

Determination could easily become obsession. — N.K. Jemisin

Who misses what they have never, ever even imagined? — N.K. Jemisin

Everyone _shouldn't_ have a say in whose life is worth fighting for. — N.K. Jemisin

It was said that the gods favored fools because they were entertaining to watch. — N.K. Jemisin

Evil was the most contagious of diseases, so virulent that no herb, surgery, or dream-humor could cure it. One's sense of what was normal, acceptable, became distorted by proximity to wrongness; entire nations had succumbed this way, first to decadence, then collapse. — N.K. Jemisin

Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them they must earn the respect which everyone else receives by default. Them them there is a standard for acceptance; that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at those contradictions, and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt. Then they'll break themselves trying for what they'll never achieve. — 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

If she hurts him because she loves him, is that still hurt? If she hurts him a lot now so that he will hurt less later, does that make her a terrible person? [...]
Is that not how love should work? — N.K. Jemisin

(It is surprising how refreshing this feels. Being judged by what you do, and not what you are.) Lately — N.K. Jemisin

It's not your status as an orogene that bothers them. It's that you haven't yet proven yourself.

(It is surprising how refreshing this feels. Being judged by what you do, and not what you are.) — N.K. Jemisin

There was no peace in continuing to do what had already proven unworkable. Sometimes tradition itself disrupted peace, and only newness could smooth the way. — N.K. Jemisin

It's hard out here for a fantasy writer, after all; there's all these 'rules' I'm supposed to follow, or the Fantasy Police might come and make me do hard labor in the Cold Iron Mines. — N.K. Jemisin

There are many of us now. Enough to be called a people in ourselves and not merely a mistake. — N.K. Jemisin

But this is what it means to be civilized - doing what her betters say she should, for the ostensible good of all. — N.K. Jemisin

This is magic we're talking about. It's supposed to go places science can't, defy logic, wink at technology, fill us all with the sensawunda that comes of gazing upon a fictional world and seeing something truly different from our own. — N.K. Jemisin

In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe. — N.K. Jemisin

The body fades. A leader who lasts relies on more. — N.K. Jemisin

In the 'Dreamblood' books, I'm focusing more on what I like about epic fantasy: the layering and depth of tension; the chance to really delve into the minutia of an alternate society and its politics; a large cast of characters to love and hate. — N.K. Jemisin

You're right," he says. "I've been crazy for years. If you stay with me for long, you will be, too. If you see enough of this, and understand enough of what it all means." He lets out a long sigh. — 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

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. — N.K. Jemisin

You have seen so much purposeless suffering that at least being killed for a reason can be borne? — N.K. Jemisin

And what do they even call this? It's not a threesome, or a love triangle. It's a two-and-a-half-some, an affection dihedron. — N.K. Jemisin

Funny thing, employment. If you keep doing it, you keep getting paid. — N.K. Jemisin

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. — N.K. Jemisin

Honor in safety, survival under threat. Better a living coward than a dead hero. — N.K. Jemisin

Actual Victorian mores and politics were a reaction to a specific series of historical events, technological and scientific developments, and ethical trends in which the commodification of people was de rigueur. — N.K. Jemisin

The grief does not feel like what you feel about Uche, or Corundum, or Innon; those are rents in your soul that still seep blood. The loss of Alabaster is simply... a thinning of who you are. — 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

This means, in a way, that true light is dependent on the presence of other lights. Take the others away and darkness results. Yet the reverse is not true: take away darkness and there is only more darkness. Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot. — N.K. Jemisin

I would savor every moment of my life that remained, suck its marrow, crunch its bones. And when the end came ... well, I would not be alone. That was a precious and holy thing. — N.K. Jemisin

The way of the world isn't the strong devouring the weak, but the weak deceiving and poisoning and whispering in the ears of the strong until they become weak, too. — N.K. Jemisin

But Schaffa is a grown-up, and grown-ups need their sleep; that's what her father always said whenever she or Chaga did something that woke him up. — N.K. Jemisin

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. — N.K. Jemisin

They ask to touch her hair and she asks to touch theirs back. This makes them all realize how strange and silly a request that is, and they giggle and become instant friends without a head petted between them. — N.K. Jemisin

[...] the kind of healer who knows that sometimes one must inflict terrible agony - rebreak a bone, carve off a limb, kill the weak - in order to make the whole stronger. — N.K. Jemisin

After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one's being. — N.K. Jemisin

It doesn't mean anything to him, she can see by his now-furious glare. He inhales to start shouting, she has no idea what but she doesn't want to hear it, and before he can she snaps, "I'm here to fuck you, Earth burn it. Is that worth disturbing your beauty rest? — N.K. Jemisin

Magic is the mysteries into which not everyone is so lucky, or unlucky, as to be initiated. It can be affected by belief, the whims of the unseen, harsh language. And it is not. Supposed. To make. Sense. In fact, I think it's coolest when it doesn't. — N.K. Jemisin

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. — N.K. Jemisin

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. — N.K. Jemisin

That taste was something I had little experience with, yet I knew it the way an infant knows love, or an animal knows fear. Jealous, even between father and son, is a fact of nature. — N.K. Jemisin

Complaining about nothing doesn't seem like coping to you, but okay. — N.K. Jemisin

It is important to appreciate beauty, even when it is evil. — N.K. Jemisin

There is such a thing as too much loss. Too much has been taken from you both - taken and taken and taken, until there's nothing left but hope, and you've given that up because it hurts too much. Until you would rather die, or kill, or avoid attachments altogether, than lose one more thing. — N.K. Jemisin

Fear was like poison to mortals; it killed their rationality. — N.K. Jemisin

Where there was movement, now there is stillness; its muscles are rock-hard, and that is not a metaphor. Its fur was just the last part of its body to change, twisting about as the follicles underneath transformed into something else. You and the commless woman both stare. Wow. Really. That's what you're thinking. You've got nothing better. Wow. That's — N.K. Jemisin

An experiment," she said ... "I am leaving Nahadoth and Itempas alone together for a while. If the universe starts coming apart again, I'll know I made a mistake. — N.K. Jemisin

But it is one thing to resolve to die, quite another to actually carry out that resolve in the midst of dying. Something — N.K. Jemisin

There was nothing we mortals would not do when it came to protecting our loved ones. — N.K. Jemisin

Loneliness is a darkness of the soul — N.K. Jemisin

The way I see it, a stranger feels like a stranger; a friend feels like a friend. Simple. — N.K. Jemisin

Within the sphere of steampunk, there seems to be a rapidly growing subsphere of gadgetless 'neo-Victorian' novels, most of which attempt to recapture the romance of the era without all the sociopolitical ugliness. — N.K. Jemisin

It's the way the human brain works: when enough events occur in a pattern, we stop thinking and go into macro mode. — N.K. Jemisin

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. — N.K. Jemisin

Real love lasts years. It causes pain, and endures through it. — N.K. Jemisin

You've read accounts of attempts by the Sixth University at Arcara to capture a stone eater for study, two Seasons back. The result was the Seventh University at Dibars, which got built only after they dug enough books out of the rubble of Sixth. — N.K. Jemisin

(Useful fact: mortals rarely look up.) — 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

Necessity is the only law, — N.K. Jemisin

Fortunately, where reason failed, blind panic served well enough. — N.K. Jemisin

It's human nature that we come in our own flavours, and it doesn't make any sense to write a monochromatic or monocultural story unless you're doing something extremely small - a locked room-style story. — N.K. Jemisin

Love is no inoculation against murder. — N.K. Jemisin

I think most fiction focuses on uncomfortable settings because that's interesting. — N.K. Jemisin

It's so reasonable that you don't know why you didn't even consider it. Well, you know why. Ykka might be an orogene like you, but you spent too many years being thwarted and betrayed by other orogenes at the Fulcrum; you know better than to trust her just because she's Your People. You should give her a chance because she's Your People, though. "Fine, — N.K. Jemisin

Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright. — N.K. Jemisin

His fingers spread and twitch as he feels several reverberating points on the map of his awareness: his fellow slaves. He cannot free them, not in the practical sense. He's tried before and failed. He can, however, make their suffering serve a cause greater than one city's hubris, and one empire's fear. — N.K. Jemisin

It's not hate that you're seeing. Hate requires emotion. What this woman has simply done is realize that you are a rogga, and decide that you aren't a person, just like that. — N.K. Jemisin

Because I think I saw you, yesterday morning when I woke up. I think my eyes worked again, just for a moment, and you were the light I saw. — N.K. Jemisin

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

With epic fantasy, there is a tendency for it to be quintessentially conservative in that its job is to restore what is perceived to be out of whack. — N.K. Jemisin

Myths tell us what those like us have done, can do, should do. Without myths to lead the way, we hesitate to leap forward. Listen to the wrong myths, and we might even go back a few steps. — N.K. Jemisin

Nothing to do but follow your crazy, — 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

Choose how your nature shapes you. Embrace it. Find the strength in it. — N.K. Jemisin

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? — N.K. Jemisin

Earth's flaming farts, it worked! — N.K. Jemisin

He has come to seduce the god of seduction, and oh, has he come prepared. — N.K. Jemisin

All that stuff about Father Earth, it's just stories to explain what's wrong with the world. Like those weird cults that crop up from time to time. I heard of one that asks an old man in the sky to keep them alive every time they go to sleep. People need to believe there's more to the world than there is. — N.K. Jemisin

keep the magma down, at least until it finds another, slower way to wend its way to the surface. — N.K. Jemisin

The look on her face is one of horror, or perhaps sorrow so great that it might as well be horror. Past a certain point, it's all the same thing. — N.K. Jemisin

I did not mean to break that planet it was just in the way when I came into being and I fixed it and I said I was sorry and the planet said OK so since I'm supposed to learn from stuff like that I will tell you don't break planets, especially the ones with living things on them, or at least fix them if you do break them. Also, don't go in black holes, no matter how much they look like cute little Nahas. They are not cute! They are actually very bitey and kind of mean. Also just OK I do not want to talk about any of this anymore. — N.K. Jemisin

Sieh was a horrible father and a wretched friend and a barely competent employee, completely unworthy of being missed or mourned. — N.K. Jemisin

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. — N.K. Jemisin

It was the oldest of tricks, to sow dissension between groups that had common interests. Good for deflecting attention from greater mischief, too. — N.K. Jemisin

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

beware love, especially the wrong man — N.K. Jemisin

Look, I don't have a problem with medieval Europe. I have a problem with modern fantasy's fetishization of medieval Europe; that's different. So many fantasy writers and fans simplify the social structure of the period, monotonize the cultural interactions, treat conflicts as binaries instead of the complicated dynamic tapestry they actually were. They're not doing medieval Europe, they're doing Simplistic British Isles Fantasy Full of Lots of Guys with Swords And Not Much Else. Not all medieval European fantasy does this, of course - but enough does that frankly, they've turned me off the setting. — N.K. Jemisin

You obeyed, once, because you thought it would make you safe. He showed you - again and again, unrelentingly, he would not let you pretend otherwise - that if obedience did not make one safe from the Guardians or the nodes or the lynchings or the breeding or the disrespect, then what was the point? The game was too rigged to bother playing. — N.K. Jemisin

It was simply that I knew, or had known, precisely why he did not love all his children equally. Differentiation, variation, appreciation of the unique: this was part of what he was. His children were not the same, so his feelings toward each were not the same. He loved us all, but differently. And because he did this, because he did not pretend that love was fair or equal, mortals could mate for an afternoon or for the rest of their lives. Mothers could tell their twins or triplets apart. Children could have crushes and outgrow them; elders could remain devoted to their spouses long after beauty had gone. The mortal heart was fickle. Naha made it so. And because of this, they were free to love as they wished, and not solely by the dictates of instinct or power or tradition. — N.K. Jemisin