Top 300 N.K. Jemisin Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” – Thomas Wolfe.”

— N.K. Jemisin

52. “Who misses what they have never, ever even imagined?”

— N.K. Jemisin

53. “Come, then, City That Never Sleeps. Let me show you what lurks in the empty spaces where nightmares dare not tread.”

— N.K. Jemisin

54. “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

55. “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

56. “When the reasoning mind is forced to confront the impossible again and again, it has no choice but to adapt.”

— N.K. Jemisin

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

— N.K. Jemisin

58. “Then she wonders why a part of her is trying to find value in degradation.”

— N.K. Jemisin

59. “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

60. “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

61. “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

62. “Some say the Earth is angry Because he wants no company; I say the Earth is angry Because he lives alone.”

— N.K. Jemisin

63. “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

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

— N.K. Jemisin

65. “This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years.”

— N.K. Jemisin

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

— N.K. Jemisin

67. “This is the lesson: Great cities are like any other living things, being born and maturing and wearying and dying in their turn.”

— N.K. Jemisin

68. “Urgency and despair don’t get along well.”

— N.K. Jemisin

69. “And so this is Um-Helat: a city whose inhabitants, simply, care for one another. That is a city’s purpose, they believe – not merely to generate revenue or energy or products, but to shelter and nurture the people who do these things.”

— N.K. Jemisin

70. “There is an art to smiling in a way that others will believe. It is always important to include the eyes; otherwise, people will know you hate them.”

— N.K. Jemisin

71. “There is such a thing as too much loss. Too much has been taken from you both – taken and taken and taken, until there’s nothing left but hope, and you’ve given that up because it hurts too much. Until you would rather die, or kill, or avoid attachments altogether, than lose one more thing.”

— N.K. Jemisin

72. “When a comm builds atop a faultline, do you blame its walls for crushing the people inside when they inevitably crumble? Some worlds are built upon a faultline of pain, held stable – temporarily – by nightmare walls. Don’t lament when they fall apart. Lament that they were ever built in the first place.”

— N.K. Jemisin

73. “But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them – even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.”

— N.K. Jemisin

74. “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

75. “So this being – whom we shall call Nahadoth because that is a pretty name, and whom we shall label male for the sake of convenience if not completeness – promptly set out to create an existence, which he did by going mad and tearing himself apart.”

— N.K. Jemisin

76. “Say nothing to me of innocent bystanders, unearned suffering, heartless vengeance. When a comm builds atop a fault line, do you blame its walls when they inevitably crush the people inside? No; you blame whoever was stupid enough to think they could defy the laws of nature forever. Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.”

— N.K. Jemisin

77. “Now she understands that his use of the slur is deliberate. A dehumanizing word for someone who has been made into a thing.”

— N.K. Jemisin

78. “He’s never hurt you, though. The world has, but not him. Maybe the world deserved to be destroyed.”

— N.K. Jemisin

79. “I’m alive. Oh, God. I cry for a little while. Mama’s boyfriend ain’t here to slap me and say I’m not a man for it. Daddy would’ve said it was okay – tears mean you’re alive – but Daddy’s dead. And I’m alive.”

— N.K. Jemisin

80. “The Fulcrum is not the first institution to have learned an eternal truth of humankind: No need for guards when you can convince people to collaborate in their own internment.”

— N.K. Jemisin

81. “Loneliness is a darkness of the soul.”

— N.K. Jemisin

82. “Some of them will decide that they also want to be beautiful and free, like you. Some will fight for this, if they must. Sometimes that’s all it takes to save a world, you see. A new vision. A new way of thinking, appearing at just the right time.”

— N.K. Jemisin

83. “This is stonelore: Honor in safety, survival under threat. Better a living coward than a dead hero.”

— N.K. Jemisin

84. “Then you say, “I want the world to be better.” I have never regretted more my inability to leap into the air and whoop for joy. Instead, I transit to you, with one hand proffered. “Then let’s go make it better.” You look amused. It’s you. It’s truly you. “Just like that?” “It might take some time.” “I don’t think I’m very patient.” But you take my hand. Don’t be patient. Don’t ever be. This is the way a new world begins. “Neither am I,” I say. “So let’s get to it.”

— N.K. Jemisin

85. “Every season is the Season for us. The apocalypse that never ends. They could’ve chosen a different kind of equality. We could’ve all been safe and comfortable together, surviving together, but they didn’t want that. Now nobody gets to be safe. Maybe that’s what it will take for them to finally realize things have to change.”

— N.K. Jemisin

86. “Much of history is unwritten. Remember this.”

— N.K. Jemisin

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

— N.K. Jemisin

88. “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

89. “Suffering is part of life,” she said. “All the parts of life are jumbled up together; you can’t separate out just the one thing.”

— N.K. Jemisin

90. “No voting on who gets to be people.”

— N.K. Jemisin

91. “All things change in a Season – and some part of you is tired, finally, of the lonely, vengeful woman narrative.”

— N.K. Jemisin

92. “What we are, what we’re made of, is many worlds coming together. Reality and legends. This world where we’re just people, and that world, where we can be miles-wide cities that just happen to be sitting a couple of feet across from each other because the laws of space, physics, don’t work the same way.”

— N.K. Jemisin

93. “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

94. “Choose how your nature shapes you. Embrace it. Find the strength in it.”

— N.K. Jemisin

95. “Fortunately, where reason failed, blind panic served well enough.”

— N.K. Jemisin

96. “But for a society build on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.”

— N.K. Jemisin

97. “Even the smallest act of peace is a blessing upon the world.”

— N.K. Jemisin

98. “Whether you live or die is irrelevant. You are Arameri, and like all of us, you will serve.”

— N.K. Jemisin

99. “This is just how life is supposed to be: terrible and brief and ending in – if you’re lucky – oblivion.”

— N.K. Jemisin

100. “When the world is hard, love must be harder still.”

— N.K. Jemisin