N. K. Jemisin Quotes

Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.

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

No voting on who gets to be people.

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus...

In the future, as in the present, as in the past, black people will build many new worlds.This is tr...

So here is why I write what I do: We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And w...

And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow d...

Myths tell us what those like us have done, can do, should do. Without myths to lead the way, we hes...

How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?

If the first words out of your mouth are to cry ‘political correctness!’, … chances are very, very h...

In the 'Dreamblood' books, I'm focusing more on what I like about epic fantasy: the layering and dep...

For all those that have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.

...she wonders why a part of her is trying to find value in degradation.

And Mother does not hate her; actually, she fears Damaya. Is there a difference? Maybe.

Many things have broken him. He holds himself together with spit and endless smiling, but all can se...

I think,' Hoa says slowly, 'that if you love someone, you don't get to choose how they love you back...

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

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

He was dead again when I got home that day. His corpse was in the kitchen, near the counter, where i...

You're very lucky... Friends are precious, powerful things - hard to earn, harder still to keep. You...

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

Her eyes are shockingly black - shocking not because black eyes are particularly rare, but because s...

The body fades. A leader who would last relies on more.

The children of the Fulcrum are all different: different ages, different colors, different shapes. S...

Who misses what they have never, ever even imagined?

Fear of a bully, fear of a volcano; the power within you does not distinguish. It does not recognize...

We aren't human.""Yes. We. Are." His voice turns fierce. "I don't give a shit what the something-som...

You must remember, though, that most normal people have never seen an orogene, let alone had to do b...

Being useful to others is not the same thing as being equal.

All that stuff about Father Earth, it's just stories to explain what's wrong with the world. Like th...

There is such a thing as too much loss. Too much has been taken from you both - taken and taken and ...

Jija killed his own son for what a completely different person did, long before that son's birth. Th...

It is the lies he's telling her - as he has been, Nassun understands suddenly, her whole life - that...

Denying what you are didn't keep people from knowing what you are.""And flaunting it isn't what save...

Urgency and despair don't get along well.

Everyone _shouldn't_ have a say in whose life is worth fighting for.

But for a society build on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppre...

I definitely haven’t been in the best place while working on this book, but I can say this much: Whe...

Syl Anagist's assimilation of the world had been over a century before I was ever made; all cities w...

She has seen him fight his own brutal nature, and the Earth itself, in order to be the parent she ne...

That we're not human is just the lie they tell themselves so they don't have to feel bad about how t...

Because that is how one survives eternity,” I say, “or even a few years. Friends. Family. Moving wit...

But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppre...

You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. A...

It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than b...

In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with...

Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.

They live forever. But many of them are even more lonely and miserable than we are. Why do you think...

This means, in a way, that true light is dependent on the presence of other lights. Take the others ...

How terrible to be a god of change and endure grief unending.

So there was love, once. More than love. And now there is more than hate. Mortals have no words for ...

It was very bad if the council had resorted to recruiting men. By tradition men were our last line o...

Determination could easily become obsession.

This is magic we're talking about. It's supposed to go places science can't, defy logic, wink at tec...

The priest's lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal's doom. My grandmother's les...

He has come to seduce the god of seduction, and oh, has he come prepared.

The younger man stepped away from the table and came toward me, his whole posture radiating menace. ...

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

...and when I lift my head to scream out my fury, a million stars turn black and die. No one can see...

Once upon a time there was aOnce upon a time there was aOnce upon a time there was aStop this. It's ...

But love like that doesn't just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always...

I remembered Nahadoth's lips on my throat and fought to suppress a shudder, only half succeeding. De...

Suffering is part of life,' she said. 'All the parts of life are jumbled up together; you can't sepa...

True peace required the presence of justice, not just the absence of conflict.

Did you know that writing stories down kills them?Of course it does, words aren't meant to be stiff,...

It was said that the gods favored fools because they were entertaining to watch.

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

Only learning oneself better, and understanding one’s place in the world, made the touch of another ...

Inevitable is not the same as immediate, Sieh--and love does not mandate forgiveness.

You have seen so much purposeless suffering that at least being killed for a reason can be borne?

Daddy," she says again, this time putting more of a needy whine into her voice. It is the thing that...

The way of the world isn't the strong devouring the weak, but the weak deceiving and poisoning and w...