N.K. Jemisin

“Wealth has no value when the ash falls.”

— N.K. Jemisin

Determination could easily become obsession.

— N.K. Jemisin

“When the world is hard, love must be harder still.”

— N.K. Jemisin

There is no logic to grief.

— N.K. Jemisin

“Earth’s flaming farts, it worked!”

— N.K. Jemisin

“today you are driven by silent, meaningful gazes,”

— N.K. Jemisin

Loneliness is a darkness of the soul

— N.K. Jemisin

“(This is not a digression.)”

— N.K. Jemisin

“The only thing stranger would be running into … the brother you actually forgot you had, until just now.”

— N.K. Jemisin

“there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors.”

— N.K. Jemisin

“But breathing doesn’t always mean living, and maybe… maybe genocide doesn’t always leave bodies.”

— N.K. Jemisin

“Life endures. It doesn’t need to do so enthusiastically.”

— N.K. Jemisin

We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.

— N.K. Jemisin

“It would be cruel to break that hope before it fades on its own.”

— N.K. Jemisin

“According to legend, Father Earth did not originally hate life.”

— N.K. Jemisin

“When we say that “the world has ended,” remember – it is usually a lie. The planet is just fine.”

— N.K. Jemisin

“ We will never be anything but strange to them. I answer in angry basso push-wave throbs. This is not about them. ”

— N.K. Jemisin

We worship Him not because He is the best of our gods, but because He is, or was, the greatest killer among…

— N.K. Jemisin

“So where they should have seen a living being, they saw only another thing to exploit. Where they should have asked, or…

— N.K. Jemisin

“Someday, you must tell me what it's like there. Why all who come out of that place seem so very competent... and…

— N.K. Jemisin

“It’s a waste of your time to teach them.” This dismissal, inexplicably, starts to eat through your patience. “It’s never a waste…

— N.K. Jemisin

“The Fulcrum is not the first institution to have learned an eternal truth of humankind: No need for guards when you can…

— N.K. Jemisin

“Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell…

— N.K. Jemisin

“He makes you feel like a better person than you are. And this is what makes you regret, again, endlessly, that you…

— N.K. Jemisin

“Nassun can't see his face, and must gauge his mood by his broad shoulders. (It bothers her that she does this, watching…

— N.K. Jemisin

“The alternative is to demand the impossible. It isn’t right, they whisper, weep, shout; what has been done to them is not…

— N.K. Jemisin

“Let me say only that these vehicles float a few inches off the ground. No animals draw them. No steam or chemical…

— N.K. Jemisin

“The younger man stepped away from the table and came toward me, his whole posture radiating menace. Every Darre woman is taught…

— N.K. Jemisin

“And yet because you are essential, you cannot be permitted to have a choice in the matter. You must be tools—and tools…

— N.K. Jemisin

So here is why I write what I do: We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And…

— N.K. Jemisin

“Can you truly understand what a nation is capable of, child of the Stillness? The entirety of Old Sanze, once it finally…

— N.K. Jemisin

“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after…

— N.K. Jemisin

“It was simply that I knew, or had known, precisely why he did not love all his children equally. Differentiation, variation, appreciation…

— N.K. Jemisin

“Face like the moon, pale and somehow wavering. I could get the gist of his features, but none of it stuck in…

— N.K. Jemisin

“J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore…

— N.K. Jemisin

“When a slave rebels, it is nothing much to the people who read about it later. Just thin words on thinner paper,…

— N.K. Jemisin

I remembered Nahadoth's lips on my throat and fought to suppress a shudder, only half succeeding. Death as a consequence of lying…

— N.K. Jemisin

“Who knows when some version of our ancestors first crawled out of the ash and started jabbering at each other? Thirty thousand…

— N.K. Jemisin

“It’s a geode. You can sess that, the way the rock around you abruptly changes to something else. The pebble in the…

— N.K. Jemisin

“I have decided to live,” he said quietly. That, too, was obvious from the way he’d changed in the past year. I…

— N.K. Jemisin