Nalo Hopkinson Quotes & Sayings

We are all here, all the powers of the Ginen lives for all the centuries that they have been in existence, and we all fight. We change when change is needed. We are a little different in each place that the Ginen have come to rest, and any one of is already many powers. No cancer can fell us all, no blight cover us completely. — Nalo Hopkinson

They are me, these women. They are the ones who taught me to see; I taught me to see. They, we, are the ones healing the Ginen story, fighting to destroy that cancerous trade in shiploads of African bodies that ever demands to be fed more sugar, more rum, more Nubian gold. — Nalo Hopkinson

She calls herself Fleet 'cause she used to be a flute player, back in the day. BC, you know?"
"British Colombia?"
He looked sad. "No, Before Crack. — Nalo Hopkinson

Chief Gray of the Osage Nation said, "Today, our neighbors are beginning to understand that when tribes are strong, everyone benefits. A rising tide lifts all boats. This has been done, not on the white man's terms, but on our own. It's not revenge, it's rebirth, and as our elders say, it is good." This — Nalo Hopkinson

Mister Pierre was finally looking at the baby's body. "A boy? Why aren't you two lackwits seeing to my child?" There had been women's voices in this room all these long hours. Mister Pierre's booming was like sudden thunder during a soft rain. — Nalo Hopkinson

So I don't see the theme of the story as nature versus science. I see it as a conflict between demanding and understanding, between the kinds of labor that our society values or doesn't value, "innovators" versus "maintainers." It's — Nalo Hopkinson

How you mean, 'doughnut hole'?" Ti-Jeanne had asked. "That's what they call it when an inner city collapses and people run to the suburbs," he'd answered. — Nalo Hopkinson

I'd like to find great stories from as many parts of the world as possible. — Nalo Hopkinson

So much history behind and between people, one moment was always a nasty echo of another time, most of who you were already scripted. — Nalo Hopkinson

So there's a freeing up that happens when I can go into that storytelling mode ... It isn't about how much sense you make, it is about how compelling you are.
(interview) — Nalo Hopkinson

How can ya think 'bout economics feelin' like . . . this?" "Not many people can," Ron said. "That's the Lll's protection. — Nalo Hopkinson

Mid-range, androgynous voice. I first thought that Solaris was a guy. Then a girl. Maybe. Then I gave up trying to figure out which. It would become obvious at some point, or not. — Nalo Hopkinson

But one of the progressions I've made is from being a depressed teenager who saw how powerless she was to change all the ills around her to being a mostly cheerful fifty-something who realizes there are all kinds of ways of working towards positive change. I am not as active in doing so as my conscience would have me be, but I am not at all passive, or powerless. And that's because I'm not alone. I've learned I can trust that humans in general will strive to make things better for themselves and their communities. Not all of us. Not always in principled, loving, or respectful ways. Often the direst opposite, in fact. But we're all on the same spinning ball of dirt, trying to live as best we can. — Nalo Hopkinson

I'm going to check the world's best source for spawning new urban legends, the Internet. What, you thought I couldn't even type? The Web is just another threshold between one world and another. — Nalo Hopkinson

How do I know anything? How is it that my arms stretched out in front of me are so pale? How to I even know that they should be brown like riverbank mud, as they were when I was many goddesses with many worshippers, ruling in lands on the other side of a great, salty ocean? I used to be many, but now we are one, all squeezed together, many necks in one coffle. — Nalo Hopkinson

Beauty and ingenuity beat perfection hands down, every time. — Nalo Hopkinson

I don't pay much mind to politricks. Never met a politician who wouldn't try to convince you that salt was sugar. — Nalo Hopkinson

The heaviness of loss in her heart hadn't eased, but there was room there for humour, too. — Nalo Hopkinson

I tried to get the word out to people who are information hubs in their communities, because they could propagate the call quickly. One challenge is that breaking science fiction means, well, breaking science fiction. Many communities of colour have a different approach to narratives of science. — Nalo Hopkinson

I figure this current era of history is the one with the best chance of quality of life for a black, female, disabled, middle-aged, queer person who's most comfortable not fitting in. The odds still aren't great, mind you. But I'll take my chances with the 21st century. — Nalo Hopkinson

I love science fiction. There are ways in which this community kept me and my partner alive through some very, very bad years, and I will always acknowledge that. — Nalo Hopkinson

When people ask me to define science fiction and fantasy I say they are the literatures that explore the fact that we are toolmakers and users, and are always changing our environment. — Nalo Hopkinson

I am Amaxon Corazon Junia Principia Delgado the Third, and I bent over my meal and wept luxurious tears into my green banana porridge. It was a perfect decoction, and it now would not satisfy me. — Nalo Hopkinson

Some days I hit that wall really hard, and I have to tell myself that I don't believe that stuff anymore. That all the things in my brain, all the little voices whispering that I'm Doing It Wrong, this is just how hegemonies work: by continuous reinforcement; by convincing people that there is only one true way (or a handful of such); by promoting and valuing, over and over, the same narratives without thought to how harmful they can be. — Nalo Hopkinson

Do not ask your future, or you will forget to live in your present. — Nalo Hopkinson

The African powers, child. The spirits. The loas. The orishas. The oldest ancestors. You will hear people from Haiti and Cuba and Brazil and so call them different names. You will even hear some names I ain't tell you, but we all mean the same thing. Them is the ones who does carry we prayers to God Father, for he too busy to listen to every single one of we on earth talking at he all the time. Each of we have a special one who is we father or mother, and no matter what we call it, whether Shango or Santeria or Voudun or what, we all doing the same thing. Serving the spirits. — Nalo Hopkinson

It's the thing I struggle with every day: the mental diligence and stamina needed to sit in front of the computer, open the file, start writing and to keep doing so, word after word, until I've created the next story. A combination of learning disability and chronic health issues make that the hardest thing for me. — Nalo Hopkinson

I wanted to believe that Makandal flew away, but my wishes can't fly freely so. They're rooted to the ground like me, who eats salt. — Nalo Hopkinson

I wish more fantasy, especially the dominant fantasy that draws heavily on British and Christian lore, would wrestle with its own ethnospecific nature and what that means when the story is set somewhere where more than one belief system is in operation. If all you do is pay lip service to it, you can get the kind of thing where the writer has thrown one Hindu god into a Christianist fantasy (rendering said god by default a demon or otherwise inferior to the dominant religious system of the story, which is such an insult), and the hero is able to vanquish it by chanting a spell in church Latin. — Nalo Hopkinson

You folk are so finicky about time, living it in straight lines like that. — Nalo Hopkinson

Why? Because I played god with you? Baby girl, that's what I do. And not lightly, either." He thought about that for a second. "Well, yes, sometimes lightly. You know what they say about all work and no play. — Nalo Hopkinson

In the back of my mind's eye, everything had a fuzzy green haze on it, like a brand-new tennis ball. The world was getting its Shine on. — Nalo Hopkinson

When your elders are millennia-old demigods, you'd best take the injunction to respect your elders seriously. — Nalo Hopkinson

I'm looking for stories that make me sit up and take notice. For engagement with language and style in ways that the genre doesn't see enough of. — Nalo Hopkinson

I've learned now to have a second title in reserve because, frequently, I come up with titles that seem to make editors' hair fall out. — Nalo Hopkinson

I'm constantly coming up with new strategies for getting to the mental place where writing is so joyous and playful that I almost can't help putting the words down. — Nalo Hopkinson

You look at science fiction and look how often it talks about being alien, being alienated about the other. Look at the number of blue people - 'Avatar,' I'm looking at you. And it is now easier to find people of color in science-fiction literature and media, but the issues of representation are still really, really troubling. — Nalo Hopkinson

I'm a novelist, editor, short story writer. I also teach, and I freelance sometimes as an arts consultant. Most of my books have been published by Warner Books, now known as Grand Central Books. — Nalo Hopkinson

My friend Ian Hagemann, a regular at Wiscon, once said on a panel that when he reads science fiction futures that are full of white people and no one else, he wonders when the race war happened that wiped out the majority of the human race, and why the writer hasn't mentioned such an important plot point. — Nalo Hopkinson

We do not know a planet that is home. We are always home. It is our job to see and map and learn languages and stories and carry them from place to place. — Nalo Hopkinson

Suck all the juice this life will give! — Nalo Hopkinson

Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back ...
The only thing soft about Tan-Tan is she big molasses-brown eyes that could look on you, and your heart would beat time ... — Nalo Hopkinson

Children were pack animals; let any one of them act different from the group, and the rest would bring him down. — Nalo Hopkinson