45 Quotes by N. K. Jemisin

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.

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.

If you can imagine something, it will be.

Readers seem to really like the fact that what I'm writing is not traditional fantasy.

I've always believed that as an artist, as a writer, you need a lot of contact with other people to make your art good.

Reactionary movements can't sustain themselves unless they find something new to catch and burn on.

My first series, the 'Inheritance' trilogy, in the first book, you were dealing with a woman of color from an impoverished culture, being brought up among wealthy, privileged white people and having to cope and perform in ways that she has not been raised to do, and that was obviously drawn from some personal experiences.

All people who grew up with science fiction and fantasy and horror went through the whole acculturation process of the genre. We were all told to read the golden age writers. We were all told Heinlein and Asimov and all these straight, white males, although some of them were Jewish.

I write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history.