413 Quotes by N.K. Jemisin

Didn’t want to wait for death to come for you. Right. Stupid, stupid woman. Death was always here. Death is you.

You understand these moments, I think instinctively. It is our nature. We are born of such pressures, and sometimes, when things are unbearable... sometimes, even we... crack.

Father Earth thinks in ages, but he never, ever sleeps. Nor does he forget.

Alas: in the Stillness, destroying mountains is as easy as an orogene toddler’s temper tantrum. Destroying a people takes only a bit more effort.

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.

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.

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

It became easy for scholars to build reputations and careers around the notion that Niess sessapinae were fundamentally different, somehow – more sensitive, more active, less controlled, less civilized – and that this was the source of their magical peculiarity. This was what made them not the same kind of human as everyone else. Eventually: not as human as everyone else. Finally: not human at all.

Accuracy is sacrificed in the name of better poetry.