N.K. Jemisin Quotes

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.

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.

Loneliness is a darkness of the soul

It is important to appreciate beauty, even when it is evil.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

But perhaps that was just the way of power: no such thing as too much.

There is no logic to grief.

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.

Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.

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.

...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.

There is nothing foolish about hope.

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.

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

Determination could easily become obsession.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

You're very lucky... Friends are precious, powerful things - hard to earn, harder still to keep. You should thank this one for taking a chance on you.

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

Any woman can face the world alone, but why should we have to?

So here is why I write what I do: We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what’s been taken from us or what poison we’ve internalized or how hard we’ve had to work to expel it – – we all get to dream.

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

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

There's truth even in tainted knowledge, if one reads carefully.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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!