N. K. Jemisin

Quotes

1. It’s all right to need help. All of us have things we can’t do alone.

   p. 1

2. 

   “You can’t lose faith you never had to begin with.”

   “Ah. So you never believed in the Bright at all?”

   “Of course I believed. Even now I believe, in principle. But when I was sixteen, I saw the hypocrisy in all the things the priests had taught me. It’s all very well to say the world values reason and compassion and justice, but if nothing in reality reflects those words, they’re meaningless.”

   p. 189

3. 

   There was no point in making myself suffer unnecessarily. As a mortal, there would be pain enough in my life, whether I sought it out or not.

   p. 119

4. 

   I...regret...what I did. It was wrong. Very wrong. But regret is meaningless.

   p. 283

5. 

   This was what I’d asked her to give me. I had no right to complain just because it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

   p. 347

6. 

   “I keep hoping you’ll tell me. You’re the god, after all. If I prayed to you for guidance, and you decided to answer, what would you tell me?”

   “I wouldn’t answer.”

   “Because you don’t care? Or because you wouldn’t know what to say?”

   More silence.

   p. 311

7. 

   At least I’m done with adolescence. Never could stand it; if I don’t want to kill someone, I want to have sex with them.

   p. 498

8. 

   I knew as well as anyone that the priests taught what they wanted us to know, not necessarily what was true. And sometimes even when they told the truth, they got it wrong.

   p. 120

9. 

   “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.”

   p. 236

10. 

    I understand that mutual dissatisfaction is a factor in their collaboration. I imagine it isn’t a far step from mutual goals to mutual respect, and from there to love.

    p. 185

11. 

    If they will not love me, fear is an acceptable substitute.

    p. 331

12. 

    So, there was a girl.

    What I’ve guessed, and what the history books imply, is that she was unlucky enough to have been sired by a cruel man. He beat both wife and daughter and abused them in other ways. Bright Itempas is called, among other things, the god of justice. Perhaps that was why He responded when she came into His temple, her heart full of unchildlike rage.

    “I want him to die,” she said (or so I imagine). “Please Great Lord, make him die.”

    You know the truth now about Itempas. He is a god of warmth and light, which we think of as pleasant, gentle things. I once thought of Him that way, too. But warmth uncooled burns; light undimmed can hurt even my blind eyes. I should have realized. We should all have realized. He was never what we wanted Him to be.

    So when the girl begged the Bright Lord to murder her father, He said, “Kill him yourself.” And He gifted her with a knife perfectly suited to her small, weak child’s hands.

    She took the knife home and used it that very night. The next day, she came back to the Bright Lord, her hands and soul stained red, happy for the first time in her short life. “I will love you forever,” she declared. And He, for a rare once, found Himself impressed by mortal will.

    Or so I imagine.

    The child was mad, of course. Later events proved this. But it makes sense to me that this madness, not mere religious devotion, would appeal most to the Bright Lord. Her love was unconditional, her purpose undiluted by such paltry considerations as conscience or doubt. It seems like Him, I think, to value that kind of purity of purpose—even though, like warmth and light, too much love is never a good thing.

    p. 202