Top 100 N.K. Jemisin Quotes
#1. Sieh was a horrible father and a wretched friend and a barely competent employee, completely unworthy of being missed or mourned.
N.K. Jemisin
#2. 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
#3. Men who served anyone could be trusted by no one.
N.K. Jemisin
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. You pretended to hate him because you were a coward. But you eventually loved him, and he is a part of you now, because you have since grown brave.
N.K. Jemisin
#7. There are many of us now. Enough to be called a people in ourselves and not merely a mistake.
N.K. Jemisin
#9. 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
#10. 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.
N.K. Jemisin
#11. Any woman can face the world alone, but why should we have to?
N.K. Jemisin
#12. But when I got angry, my nerves sought an outlet, and my mouth didn't always guard the gates.
N.K. Jemisin
#13. Jija killed his own son for what a completely different person did, long before that son's birth. This, more than anything, helps her finally understand that there is no reasoning with her father's hatred.
N.K. Jemisin
#14. 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
#15. After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one's being.
N.K. Jemisin
#16. Funny thing, employment. If you keep doing it, you keep getting paid.
N.K. Jemisin
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. You have seen so much purposeless suffering that at least being killed for a reason can be borne?
N.K. Jemisin
#20. Everyone _shouldn't_ have a say in whose life is worth fighting for.
N.K. Jemisin
#22. I considered several lies - then decided the truth was so outrageous that she might believe it more readily. I'm a godling, sent by an organization of godlings based in Shadow. We think you might be trying to destroy the world. Could you, perhaps, stop?
N.K. Jemisin
#23. 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
#24. Fear was like poison to mortals; it killed their rationality.
N.K. Jemisin
#25. 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
#26. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. Four are the tributaries of the great river. Four are the harvests from floodseason to dust. Four are the great treasures: timbalin, myrrh, lapis, and jungissa. Four bands of color mark the face of the Dreaming Moon. Red for blood. White for seed. Yellow for ichor. Black for bile.
N.K. Jemisin
#31. 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
#32. True peace required the presence of justice, not just the absence of conflict.
N.K. Jemisin
#33. Of course I was enough, because he loved me. That was the whole point.
N.K. Jemisin
#34. The way I see it, a stranger feels like a stranger; a friend feels like a friend. Simple.
N.K. Jemisin
#35. Reconciliations are for after the violence has ended.
N.K. Jemisin
#36. 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!
N.K. Jemisin
#37. Wounds get better. What makes grief get better?" "Nothing. Time can ease it, but nothing ends it.
N.K. Jemisin
#38. Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.
N.K. Jemisin
#39. We can never be gods, after all
but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.
N.K. Jemisin
#40. It is important to give just the right instructions. He thinks in loopholes.
N.K. Jemisin
#41. 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
#42. Honor in safety, survival under threat. Better a living coward than a dead hero.
N.K. Jemisin
#43. The Nightlord cannot be controlled, child. He can only be unleashed. And you asked him not to kill.
N.K. Jemisin
#45. Then she wonders why a part of her is trying to find value in degradation.
N.K. Jemisin
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. Eyes whose color I would never be able to fully describe, even if I someday learn the words. The best I can do is compare it to things I do know: the heavy thickness of red gold, the smell of brass on a hot day, desire and pride.
N.K. Jemisin
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. So there was love, once. More than love. And now there is more than hate. Mortals have no words for what we gods feel. Gods have no words for such things. But love like that doesn't just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always love left, underneath. Horrible, isn't it?
N.K. Jemisin
#52. 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
#53. Fear of a bully, fear of a volcano; the power within you does not distinguish. It does not recognize degree.
N.K. Jemisin
#54. 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.
N.K. Jemisin
#55. keep the magma down, at least until it finds another, slower way to wend its way to the surface.
N.K. Jemisin
#56. It had not been all suffering and horror. Life is never only one thing.
N.K. Jemisin
#58. 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
#59. Whether you live or die is irrelevant. You are Arameri, and like all of us, you will serve.
N.K. Jemisin
#60. It was said that the gods favored fools because they were entertaining to watch.
N.K. Jemisin
#61. Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.
N.K. Jemisin
#62. 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
#63. You've never really trusted him, though you don't understand why. Something about the fact that he's hidden all his life - which is hypocritical as hell after your ten years in Tirimo.
N.K. Jemisin
#64. Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.
N.K. Jemisin
#65. 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.
N.K. Jemisin
#66. 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
#67. The body fades. A leader who lasts relies on more.
N.K. Jemisin
#68. It is not safe to hate the Arameri. Instead we hate their weapons, because weapons do not care.
N.K. Jemisin
#69. Her eyes are shockingly black - shocking not because black eyes are particularly rare, but because she's wearing smoky gray eyeshadow and dark eyeliner to accentuate them further. Makeup, while the world is ending.
N.K. Jemisin
#71. ...tears would have made him feel weak. Men have always been fragile that way.
N.K. Jemisin
#72. This understanding floats on the surface of Jija's mind for the rest of the day after Renthree leaves. The truth is beneath the surface, a Leviathan waiting to uncurl, but the waters of his thoughts are placid for now. Denial is powerful.
N.K. Jemisin
#73. It takes great strength to compromise, Shahar. More than it does to threaten and destroy, since you must fight your own pride as well as the enemy.
N.K. Jemisin
#74. But if you stay, no part of this comm gets to decide that any part of this comm is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people.
N.K. Jemisin
#75. Someday, you must tell me what it's like there. Why all who come out of that place seem so very competent... and so very afraid.
N.K. Jemisin
#76. Real love lasts years. It causes pain, and endures through it.
N.K. Jemisin
#77. 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
#79. 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
#80. He has come to seduce the god of seduction, and oh, has he come prepared.
N.K. Jemisin
#81. Neither myths nor mysteries can hold a candle to the most infinitesimal spark of hope.
N.K. Jemisin
#82. That Castrima has lasted this far, a comm of stills who have repeatedly failed to lynch the roggas openly living among them, is miraculous. Even if "hasn't yet committed genocidal slaughter" is a low bar to hop, other communities haven't even managed that much. You'll give credit where it's due. It
N.K. Jemisin
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. His faith sustains him - and faith is so easy to break.
N.K. Jemisin
#86. 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
#87. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. [...] 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
#92. There was nothing we mortals would not do when it came to protecting our loved ones.
N.K. Jemisin
#93. Didn't want to wait for death to come for you. Right. Stupid, stupid woman. Death was always here. Death is you.
N.K. Jemisin
#94. Rising from the dead? Glowing at sunrise? What did that make him, the god of cheerful mornings and macabre surprises?
N.K. Jemisin
#96. Necessity is the only law, says stonelore. "Not
N.K. Jemisin
#98. 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
#99. I don't really understand why so many fantasy writers choose to focus on worlds that just seem strangely denuded. But to them, I guess it doesn't seem strange. And I guess that's their privilege. It isn't mine.
N.K. Jemisin
#100. The body fades. A leader who would last relies on more.
N.K. Jemisin
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
