N. K. Jemisin Quotes

Funny thing, employment. If you keep doing it, you keep getting paid.

Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.

Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall; Death is the Fifth, and master of all.

What happened when people who’d once possessed absolute power suddenly lost it?

I knew what it was at last—the visible manifestation of my will. My power, inherited from my god ancestors and distilled through generations of humanity, given shape and energy and potential. That was all magic was, really, in the end. Possibility. With it I could create anything, provided I believed.

Honor in safety, survival under threat. Better a living coward than a dead hero.

Fear was like poison to mortals; it killed their rationality.

When things are bad, change is good, right? Change means things will get better.

Put people in a cage and they will devote themselves to escaping it, not cooperating with those who caged them.

Well, isn't that what fathers do? He had no idea what fathers did. Love you, even if you don't love them? Miss you when you go away?

Magic is merely communication, after all.
Communication, and conduits.

Peace is meaningless without freedom.

Unconditional love: childhood’s greatest magic.

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.

Even our mortal courtesans have been with gods enough to have acquired a certain ethereal technique. He smiled a salesman's smile, though it never once touched his eyes.
That's what you're selling. Not sex, but divinity. I frowned. Gods, Ahad, at least worship is free.
It was never free. His smile vanished. It hadn't been real, anyway. Every mortal who offered a god devotion wanted something in exchange for it—blessings, a guaranteed place in the heavens, status. And every god who demanded worship expected loyalty and more, in exchange. So why shouldn't we be honest about what we're doing? At least here, no god lies.