Top 300 N.K. Jemisin Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Fear of a bully, fear of a volcano; the power within you does not distinguish. It does not recognize degree.”

— N.K. Jemisin

102. “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.”

— N.K. Jemisin

103. “People who say change is impossible are usually pretty happy with things just as they are.”

— N.K. Jemisin

104. “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

105. “I would savor every moment of my life that remained, suck its marrow, crunch its bones. And when the end came... well, I would not be alone. That was a precious and holy thing.”

— N.K. Jemisin

106. “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

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

— N.K. Jemisin

108. “We realized it was impossible to protect any one place if the place next door was drowning or on fire. We realized the old boundaries weren’t meant to keep the undesirable out, but to hoard resources within. And the hoarders were the core of the problem.”

— N.K. Jemisin

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

— N.K. Jemisin

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

— N.K. Jemisin

111. “When things are bad, change is good, right? Change means things will get better.”

— N.K. Jemisin

112. “Nothing human beings do is set in stone – and even stone changes, anyway. We can change, too, anything about ourselves that we want to. We just have to want to. People who say change is impossible are usually pretty happy with things just as they are.”

— N.K. Jemisin

113. “I don’t bother to explain that just because something is horrible does not make it any less true.”

— N.K. Jemisin

114. “There’s truth even in tainted knowledge, if one reads carefully.” “Only if one knows the knowledge is tainted in the first place.”

— N.K. Jemisin

115. “Discomfort is understandable. It’s the rudeness that isn’t.”

— N.K. Jemisin

116. “No mortal, and probably no god, could comprehend Hado’s life.”

— N.K. Jemisin

117. “Veneza is so much of what Bronca could have been, if she’d come up in a better world – and so much of what Bronca is now, because the world is still a goddamn shitshow.”

— N.K. Jemisin

118. “Home isn’t where the heart is. It’s wherever the wind feels right.”

— N.K. Jemisin

119. “The harbingers of the enemy will hide among the city’s parasites. Beware of them.”

— N.K. Jemisin

120. “Survival doesn’t mean rightness. I could kill you right now, but that wouldn’t make me a better person for doing so.”

— N.K. Jemisin

121. “Six billion people working toward a goal together is much more effective than a few dozen scrabbling for themselves.”

— N.K. Jemisin

122. “She can’t explain it. Lines of force, lines of sight, mathematical configurations; all of the knowledge that she needs is in her mind, but cannot be reproduced by her tongue.”

— N.K. Jemisin

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

— N.K. Jemisin

124. “Coldness would be reprehensible, horrifying. Compassion is worse, because it cannot be dismissed as evil.”

— N.K. Jemisin

125. “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

126. “Remember, too, that the Earth does not fully understand us. It looks upon human beings and sees short-lived, fragile creatures, puzzlingly detached in substance and awareness from the planet on which their lives depend, who do not understand the harm they tried to do – perhaps because they are so short-lived and fragile and detached.”

— N.K. Jemisin

127. “Well, I mean, just the sight of something awful and incomprehensible isn’t going to send me off frothing at the mouth,” Veneza says. It’s nonchalant, but there is a shaken note to her voice nonetheless. “I’m from Jersey.”

— N.K. Jemisin

128. “It is horrifyingly obvious now that getting more attention isn’t necessarily favoritism.”

— N.K. Jemisin

129. “I like being an orogene, Daddy, she says. His eyes widen. This is a terrible things that she is saying. It is a terrible thing that she loves herself.”

— N.K. Jemisin

130. “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

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

— N.K. Jemisin

132. “And if one tendril has turned a nosy, racist white woman into a conduit for disembodied existential evil, he doesn’t want to see what infected NYPD will become.”

— N.K. Jemisin

133. “She is such a good child at her core. Don’t be angry with her, she can only make choices within the limited set of her experiences. And it isn’t her fault that so many of those experiences have been terrible. Marvel instead at how easily she loves, how thoroughly. Love enough to change the world. She learned how to love like this from somewhere.”

— N.K. Jemisin

134. “There is peace in submission, but sometimes greater peace – lasting peace – in resistance.”

— N.K. Jemisin

135. “She means to wait here with me. I’m glad. Some things are easier when not faced alone.”

— N.K. Jemisin

136. “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

137. “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

138. “But then, how can they? Who misses what they have never, ever even imagined? That would not be human nature. How fortunate, then, that there are more people in this world than just humankind.”

— N.K. Jemisin

139. “Take a nautilus shell; cut it cross section. Gently elevate its swirling, chambered tiers as they approach the tight-bound center, culminating at last in a pinnacle on which we all stood. Note its asymmetrical order, its chaotic repetition, the grace of its linkages. Contemplate the ephemerality of its existence. Such is the beauty that is mortal life.”

— N.K. Jemisin

140. “He has made his fellow citizens happier, and there is no finer virtue by the customs of this gentle, rich land.”

— N.K. Jemisin

141. “Accuracy is sacrificed in the name of better poetry.”

— N.K. Jemisin

142. “You offered him a hand to help him up, not realizing he weighed of diamond bones and ancient tales untold.”

— N.K. Jemisin

143. “Evil was the most contagious of diseases, so virulent that no herb, surgery, or dream-humor could cure it. One’s sense of what was normal, acceptable, became distorted by proximity to wrongness; entire nations had succumbed this way, first to decadence, then collapse.”

— N.K. Jemisin

144. “They have never believed us human, but we will prove by our actions today that we are more than tools. Even if we aren’t human, we are people. They will never be able to deny us this again.”

— N.K. Jemisin

145. “Wounds get better. What makes grief get better?” “Nothing. Time can ease it, but nothing ends it.”

— N.K. Jemisin

146. “Frightened people look for scapegoats.”

— N.K. Jemisin

147. “It is important to give just the right instructions. He thinks in loopholes.”

— N.K. Jemisin

148. “Now you know that miracles are a matter of just effort, just perception, and maybe just magic.”

— N.K. Jemisin

149. “This is our role: To weave together those disparate energies. To manipulate and mitigate and, through the prism of our awareness, produce a singular force that cannot be denied. To make of cacophony, symphony.”

— N.K. Jemisin

150. “I have decided that I am in love, but love is a painful hotspot roil beneath the surface of me in a place where once there was stability, and I do not like it.”

— N.K. Jemisin