N. K. Jemisin

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

When people questioned this, the priests simply said, The world has changed. We must change with it.

You can imagine how well that went over.

Unconditional love: childhood’s greatest magic.

Magic is merely communication, after all.

Communication, and conduits.

I’d come down sick. (I had. It was called adolescence, an evil, evil disease.)

Those with power would always find some way to exert it over those who didn’t.

Unreasoning optimism is a fundamental element of childishness.

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

Very quickly I fell in with others like me—newcomers, dreamers, young people drawn to the city in spite of its dangers because sometimes, for some of us, tedium and familiarity feel worse than risking your life.

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

There’s not such thing as magic that does no harm.

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