413 Quotes by N.K. Jemisin

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.

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

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.

He knows this is true, suddenly – and he hates that this, out of the gray undifferentiated morass that is his past, is the knowledge that’s returned to him.

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.

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.

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

In a child’s eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.

Real gods aren’t what most of you Christians think of as gods. Gods are people. Sometimes dead people, sometimes still alive. Sometimes never lived.” She shrugs. “They do jobs – bring fortune, look after people, make sure the world works as it should. They fall in love. Have babies. Fight. Die.” She shrugs. “It’s duty. It’s normal. Get over it.