413 Quotes by N.K. Jemisin

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.

Peace is meaningless without freedom.

Why do I even love him anymore? Nassun finds herself thinking as she stares at her father.

It’s a gift if it makes us better. It’s a curse if we let it destroy us.

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.

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.

You obeyed, once, because you thought it would make you safe. He showed you – again and again, unrelentingly, he would not let you pretend otherwise – that if obedience did not make one safe from the Guardians or the nodes or the lynchings or the breeding or the disrespect, then what was the point? The game was too rigged to bother playing.

I found it perversely comforting that she had tried to kill me at birth.

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