N.K. Jemisin Quotes
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Loneliness is a darkness of the soul
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We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.
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There is no logic to grief.
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Rising from the dead? Glowing at sunrise? What did that make him, the god of cheerful mornings and macabre surprises?
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...and when I lift my head to scream out my fury, a million stars turn black and die. No one can see them, but they are my tears.
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It was very bad if the council had resorted to recruiting men. By tradition men were our last line of defence, their physical strength bent towards the single and most important task of protecting our homes and children. This meant the council had decided that our only defence was to defeat the enemy, period. Anything else meant the end of Darre.
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I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore. I must try to remember.
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Funny thing, employment. If you keep doing it, you keep getting paid.
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He was dead again when I got home that day. His corpse was in the kitchen, near the counter, where it appeared he'd been chopping vegetables when the urge to stab himself through the wrist had struck. I slipped on the blood coming in, which annoyed me because that meant it was all over the kitchen floor.
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And in that sliver of time, I felt the power around me coalesce, malice-hard and sharp as crystal. That this analogy occurred to me should have been a warning.
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It is important to appreciate beauty, even when it is evil.
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Once upon a time there was a Once upon a time there was a Once upon a time there was a Stop this. It's undignified.
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You are Insignificant. One of millions, neither special nor unique. I did not ask for this ignominy, and I resent the comparison. Fine. I don't you like you, either.
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It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all - but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.
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Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.
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There is nothing foolish about hope.
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But when I got angry, my nerves sought an outlet, and my mouth didn't always guard the gates.
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If the first words out of your mouth are to cry 'political correctness!', ... chances are very, very high that you are in fact part of the problem.
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The shadows of Ina-Karekh are the place where nightmares dwell, but not their source. Never forget: the shadowlands are not elsewhere. We create them. They are within.
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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.
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You're very lucky... Friends are precious, powerful things - hard to earn, harder still to keep. You should thank this one for taking a chance on you.
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But perhaps that was just the way of power: no such thing as too much.
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I remembered Nahadoth's lips on my throat and fought to suppress a shudder, only half succeeding. Death as a consequence of lying with a god wasn't something I had considered, but it did not surprise me. A mortal man's strength had its limits. He spent himself and slept. He could be a good lover, but even his best skills were only guesswork - for every caress that sent a woman's head into the clouds, he might try ten that brought her back to earth.
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Fortunately, where reason failed, blind panic served well enough.
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Determination could easily become obsession.
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This means, in a way, that true light is dependent on the presence of other lights. Take the others away and darkness results. Yet the reverse is not true: take away darkness and there is only more darkness. Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot.
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If the gods do decide to wipe us out, is it such a bad thing? Maybe we've earned a little annihilation.
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Immortality gets very, very boring. You'd be surprised at how interesting the small mundanities of life can seem after a few millennia.
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There is no greater warrior than a mother protecting her child.
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There's truth even in tainted knowledge, if one reads carefully.
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