89 Quotes by Yoon Ha Lee

Once a woman put her hand in a gate and it ate her fingers. A five-legged spider with red eyes crawled out. That woman put in three fingers from her other hand, so that the spider might be complete. Do you have that integrity of purpose, sister?

Crying was something it had only seen humans do in dramas, and in dramas they did it much more prettily, at dramatic moments, with swelling music in the background. Instead, the girl was getting mucus on her sleeve, and Hemiola didn’t understand the context, and it doubted she would appreciate it providing swelling music on her behalf.

All across the hexarchate were people like his older sister: loyal citizens, decent people in their day to day lives, many of whom had benefited even from a system that ran on regular ritualized torture.

Immortality was like sex: it made idiots of otherwise rational people.

What good is immortality if nothing has been done to repair the fault lines in the human heart?

Sometimes the best way to understand people was through their food.

History forgives the winner a lot of things.

But then, war is about taking the future away from people.

Phoenix Extravagant for destructive power, as befits an engine of war.