Top 100 Kameron Hurley Quotes
#1. There is nothing I fear more than someone without memory. A person without memory is free to do anything she likes.
Kameron Hurley
#2. We aren't going to win," Roh said. "No," Luna said, "but we're going to live.
Kameron Hurley
#3. Ras Tiegans fried everything, from grasshoppers to pickles to hunks of curried dog.
Kameron Hurley
#4. Inaya showed up a little later with a clean tunic and trousers and long Ras Tiegan coat.
"Thought you'd hand me an abaya," Nyx said.
"Since when have you presented yourself as a real woman?" Inaya said.
"Good point.
Kameron Hurley
#5. The war had remade her. Reshaped her purpose. Why couldn't she unmake it again?
Kameron Hurley
#6. 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
#7. Your haters are not here for a conversation. They are here to keep you from doing your work.
Kameron Hurley
#8. 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
#9. All you have to decide, as they say, is what you do with the time given.
Kameron Hurley
#10. Men did not like women to weep. It reminded them of their own failings.
Kameron Hurley
#11. You will learn to love it. Or it will destroy you. Neither is unpleasant.
Kameron Hurley
#12. 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
#13. 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
#15. And there is good money to be made when things are bad.
Kameron Hurley
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#21. 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
#23. Power is nothing without discipline. Power without discipline is short lived.
Kameron Hurley
#24. 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
#25. Reality TV does actually have a message, folks. That message is selling and reinforcing capitalism, ignorance, and the status quo.
Kameron Hurley
#26. This is the power and promise of science fiction, this magic of creating and living in every possible future.
Kameron Hurley
#27. Nyx was a lot of things, but forgettable wasn't one of them.
Kameron Hurley
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. She wanted to build a better world. So why did so many others want to keep it just the same?
Kameron Hurley
#31. Someone had to fight the monsters. Who better than a monster?
Kameron Hurley
#32. And some of us believe in freedom of the individual over the tyranny of the common good.
Kameron Hurley
#33. 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
#34. We all want a good many things, child, but it doesn't mean we get them,
Kameron Hurley
#35. She had a lined, weathered face that put Roh in mind of the creased leather spines of old books.
Kameron Hurley
#36. She had traded that first womb for twenty notes and a case of Ras Tiegan beer.
Kameron Hurley
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. And next thing you know, six of my best apprentices get purged for minor paperwork discrepancies and perhaps an unreported cock or two.
Kameron Hurley
#40. When we were too frightened to save our own people, we murdered others.
Kameron Hurley
#41. I'd internalized an astonishing amount of misogyny growing up that I didn't even recognize until my early twenties.
Kameron Hurley
#42. ( ... ) then went into his room in the middle of the night after a long, heavy day of footwork and drinking; a coward's fight. She'd trussed him up and cut off his cock. She considered the act her formal resignation.
Kameron Hurley
#43. If you think there's a thing - anything - women didn't do in the past, you're wrong.
Kameron Hurley
#44. She is equal parts manic brutality and strategic fuckery.
Kameron Hurley
#45. We all fight monsters, she knew. There was no shame in losing.
Kameron Hurley
#46. I don't know what God wants, Eshe."
"The mullahs say they know what God wants," Eshe said. "You believe them?" He met her look in the rearview mirror.
Nyx looked back at the road. "The mullahs can't figure out what they want for dinner," she said.
Kameron Hurley
#47. 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
#48. Tea with a Chenjan. What was next? Ahmed thought. Dinner with bel dames?
Kameron Hurley
#50. Light doesn't always keep the dark things away, Nyx said.
Kameron Hurley
#51. There are some stories that don't want telling," Gian said. "Some stories you tell, they make things worse. Not better.
Kameron Hurley
#52. There is something more than violence that Nasheenians taught me, and that is the awful brutality of speaking absolute truth. I propose that we begin to unmask ourselves. We speak the truth of ourselves. We tell them just how many of us there are.
Kameron Hurley
#54. All you do is learn how to fight a war," Nyx said. "Nobody ever teaches you how to stop.
Kameron Hurley
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. The most dangerous lie we tell ourselves is that writing novels shouldn't feel like a job.
Kameron Hurley
#58. 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
#59. I'm not trying to be mean,' Casamir says.
'Intent doesn't always matter.
Kameron Hurley
#60. 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
#61. This is why I write. This is why I keep speaking. This is why I endure. Because if I don't tell my stories, someone else will.
Kameron Hurley
#62. But I find soldiering false, a broken way to manage people who should be bound to you in love, not fear.
Kameron Hurley
#63. You need to change the whole system to be free, not just improve your part in it.
Kameron Hurley
#64. Nobody knows anybody. We're all working on blind faith.
Kameron Hurley
#65. 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
#66. The women in my family were hardworking matriarchs. But the stories I saw on TV and movies and even in many books said they were anomalies
Kameron Hurley
#67. 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
#68. They'd pay attention to me less. They'd judge me by gender, by looks, by weight before anything else. I automatically started every interaction at a disadvantage.
Kameron Hurley
#69. The wonderful thing about being ignorant is that it can be resolved very easily. Foolishness cannot.
Kameron Hurley
#70. Every time Nyx thought she'd gotten out of the business of killing boys, she shot another one.
Kameron Hurley
#71. Nyx had finished off a fifth of vodka for breakfast, since she'd sworn off whiskey.
Kameron Hurley
#72. Her body sometimes amazed her. She could keep going long after she couldn't.
Kameron Hurley
#73. 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
#74. War makes monsters of us all. But what happens to those of us who no longer wish to be monsters?
Kameron Hurley
#75. We worship the same God and we carry the same sins.
Kameron Hurley
#76. 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
#78. He's grown into quite the young man since you took him in."
"You say that like being a man's a good thing," Nyx said.
Kameron Hurley
#79. 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
#80. What were all of them, really, but bits of something else? Bits of stars?
Kameron Hurley
#81. His militia escorted her up four painful flights of stairs to a great foyer, apologizing the whole way for not considering how difficult stairs would be for her. What they really meant, of course, was that they felt silly and impatient because her pace was so much slower than theirs.
Kameron Hurley
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. Being fucked up is fine so long as you compensate for it.
Kameron Hurley
#85. 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
#86. It was strange how you didn't realise how much you loved a place until you had lost it completely.
Kameron Hurley
#87. I'm a bloodletter, not a politician," Nyx said. "I just take off heads.
Kameron Hurley
#88. I hate surprises, boss. The last surprise I got, somebody died.
Yeah, well. the last surprise I got, I went to prison.
Kameron Hurley
#89. Women in Nasheen didn't grow up looking for husbands. They grew up looking for honor and glory.
Kameron Hurley
#90. I thought you loved all this excitement,' Nyx said.
'I love orange-flavored popsicles. Fried maggots on toast. Sunset in Ashura. This? This, I merely tolerate.
Kameron Hurley
#91. Nobody really knows what I am," Nyx said. "Not until I put a bullet in their head.
Kameron Hurley
#92. This trip just went from fucked up to totally fucking crazy shit.
Kameron Hurley
#93. Nyx did what she always did after she shot a terrorist or garrotted a deserter. She carried on.
Kameron Hurley
#94. 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
#95. Your voice is powerful. Your voice has meaning. If it didn't, people wouldn't work so hard to silence you.
Remember that.
Kameron Hurley
#96. People do not take actions based on logic. We make choices based on emotion. Every one of us. Then we use what we call logic to justify our choices.
Kameron Hurley
#97. Because until you know what you want to be, other people are just going to keep trying to make you into something useful for them.
Kameron Hurley
#98. The sand has rules. Fucked up rules, but rules nonetheless.
Kameron Hurley
#99. What folks don't realize, I think, is that very often "good" just means "competent." I
Kameron Hurley
#100. 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
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