The voices / 72 fragments

N.K. Jemisin

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Archive entries

01Undated

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.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

02Undated

Many things have broken him. He holds himself together with spit and endless smiling, but all can see the cracks. You, though; you are dented, bruised, but intact.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

03Undated

The way of the world isn't the strong devouring the weak, but the weak deceiving and poisoning and whispering in the ears of the strong until they become weak, too.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

04Undated

How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?

N.K. Jemisin / quote

05Undated

All that stuff about Father Earth, it's just stories to explain what's wrong with the world. Like those weird cults that crop up from time to time. I heard of one that asks an old man in the sky to keep them alive every time they go to sleep. People need to believe there's more to the world than there is.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

06Undated

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.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

07Undated

Inevitable is not the same as immediate, Sieh--and love does not mandate forgiveness.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

08Undated

...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.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

09Undated

Who misses what they have never, ever even imagined?

N.K. Jemisin / quote

10Undated

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.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

11Undated

You have seen so much purposeless suffering that at least being killed for a reason can be borne?

N.K. Jemisin / quote

12Undated

Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

13Undated

But when I got angry, my nerves sought an outlet, and my mouth didn't always guard the gates.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

14Undated

But love like that doesn't just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always a little love left, underneath.Yes. Horrible, isn't it?

N.K. Jemisin / quote

15Undated

So there was love, once. More than love. And now there is more than hate. Mortals have no words for what we gods feel. Gods have no words for such things. But love like that doesn't just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always love left, underneath. Horrible, isn't it?

N.K. Jemisin / quote

16Undated

It is the lies he's telling her - as he has been, Nassun understands suddenly, her whole life - that really break her heart. He's said that he loves her, after all, but that obviously isn't true. He cannot love an orogene, and that is what she is. He cannot be an orogene's father, and that is why he constantly demands she be something other than what she is.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

17Undated

Everyone _shouldn't_ have a say in whose life is worth fighting for.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

18Undated

True peace required the presence of justice, not just the absence of conflict.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

19Undated

Myths tell us what those like us have done, can do, should do. Without myths to lead the way, we hesitate to leap forward. Listen to the wrong myths, and we might even go back a few steps.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

20Undated

Did you know that writing stories down kills them?Of course it does, words aren't meant to be stiff, unchanging things.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

21Undated

Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

22Undated

Determination could easily become obsession.

N.K. Jemisin / quote

23Undated

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

N.K. Jemisin / quote

24Undated

Daddy," she says again, this time putting more of a needy whine into her voice. It is the thing that has swayed him, these times when he has come near to turning on her: remembering that she is his little girl. Reminding him that he has been, up to today, a good father.It is a manipulation. Something of her is warped out of true by this moment, and from now on all her acts of affection toward her father will be calculated, performative. Her childhood dies, for all intents and purposes. But that is better than all of her dying, she knows.

N.K. Jemisin / quote