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.

— N.K. Jemisin

It is the lies he's telling her - as he has been, Reissue 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 orogeny, and that is what she is. Furthermore, he cannot be an orogeny's father, and that is why he constantly demands she be something other than what she is.

— N.K. Jemisin

It was said that the gods favored fools because they were entertaining to watch.

— N.K. Jemisin

It was very bad if the council had resorted to recruiting men. By tradition men were our last line of defense, 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 defense was to defeat the enemy, period. Anything else meant the end of Darren.

— N.K. Jemisin

Jira killed his own son for what a completely different person did, long before that son's birth. This, more than anything, helps her finally understand that there is no reasoning with her father's hatred.

— N.K. Jemisin

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I’ve heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures’ myths, and maybe that was true. I don’t know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream. Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don’t have enough myths of our own, we’ll latch onto those of others — even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it’s human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight.

— N.K. Jemisin

Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.

— N.K. Jemisin

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

No voting on who gets to be people.

— N.K. Jemisin

Once upon a time there was once upon a time there was once upon a time there was stop this. It's undignified.

— N.K. Jemisin