“Word spread because word will spread. Stories and secrets fight, stories win, shed new secrets, which new stories fight, and on.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“It felt like being a child again, though it was not. Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“We speak now or I do, and others do. You've never spoken before. You will. You'll be able to say how the city is a pit and a hill and a standard and an animal that hunts and a vessel on the sea and the sea and how we are fish in it, not like the man who swims weekly with fish but the fish with which he swims, the water, the pool. I love you, you light me, warm me, you are suns.
You have never spoken before.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“I don't want to be a simile anymore,' I said. "I want to be a metaphor.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“I differ with myself then agree, like the rock that was broken and cemented together. I change my opinion.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice...”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“I couldn't tell if I was perspicacious or paranoid.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“I needed to be alone for whatever would happen. I knew that something would as certainly as if this were a last chapter.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“We have to establish our credentials as an explorocracy; so to survive and rule ourselves, we have to explore.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“BEFORE THE HUMANS came we didn’t speak so much of certain things. Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much. Before the humans came we didn’t speak.” He glanced at me. “We didn’t walk on our wings. We didn’t walk. We didn’t swallow earth. We didn’t swallow.” Scile was reading nervously, quickly. “‘There’s a Terre who swims with fishes, one who wore no clothes, one who ate what was given her, one who walks backwards. There’s a rock that was broken and cemented together. I differ with myself then agree, like the rock that was broken and cemented together. I change my opinion. I’m like the rock that was broken and cemented together. I wasn’t not like the rock that was broken and cemented together. “‘I do what I always do, I’m like the Terre who swims with fishes. I’m not unlike that Terre. I’m very like it. ‘I’m not water. I’m not water. I’m water.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“Now the Ariekei were learning to speak, and to think, and it hurt.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“A promise fulfilled may be a classic moment, but prophecies mean anticlimax. How much more awesome was an unexpected salvation?”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“Oh, bullshit. This isn't one of those stories, Avice. One moment of cack-handedness, Captain Cook offends the bloody locals, one slip of the tongue or misuse of sacred cutlery, and bang, he's on the grill. Do you ever think about how self-aggrandising that stuff is? Oh, all those stories pretending to be mea culpas about cultural insensitivity, oops, we said the wrong thing, but they're really all about how ridiculous natives overreact. Avice, we must have made thousands of fuckups like that over the years. Think about it. Just like our visitors did when they first met our lot, on Terre. And for the most part we didn't lose our shit, did we?”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“There are no telepaths in this universe, I think, but there are empathics, with languages so silent that they may as well be sharing thoughts.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“Its surface sheened with saft that evaporated out from its crystal shielding in threads that degraded to nothing.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“As an immerser I progressed to the ranks I aspired to—those that granted me a certain cachet and income while keeping me from fundamental responsibilities. This is what I excelled at: the life-technique of aggregated skill, luck, laziness and chutzpah that we call floaking.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“A classic unspoken agreement among escapees from a small town: don't look back, don't be each other's anchors, no nostalgia.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“If I program ’ware with an Anglo-Ubiq word and play it, you understand it,” Scile said. “If I do the same with a word in Language, and play it to an Ariekes, I understand it, but to them it means nothing, because it’s only sound, and that’s not where the meaning lives. It needs a mind behind it.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“Language is the continuation of coercion by other means."
"Bullshit. It's cooperation." Both theories explained what had happened plausibly. I resisted, because it felt trite, saying that they weren't as contradictory as they sounded.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“The sounds aren’t where the meaning lives. […]
Their language is organised noise, like all of ours are, but for them each word is a funnel. Where to us each word means something, to the Hosts, each is an opening. A door, through which the thought of that referent, the thought itself that reached for that word, can be seen. […]
When they speak they do hear the soul in each voice. That’s how the meaning lives there. The words have got . . .” He shook his head, hesitating, then just using that religiose term. “Got the soul in them. And it has to be there, the meaning. Has to be true to be Language.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“They hammered it with sometimes-guns, that violently assert the manchmal, this stuff, our everyday, against the always of the immer.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“You'd love a bit of pomp: that way in later years you might invoke end-of-empire ghosts.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“The return to anywhere you last visited as a child is difficult, especially when it’s a door. Your heart beats harder when you knock.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“You’d have known that without being told if you let yourself think about it.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“Oh, bullshit,” Wyatt said. I blinked. “This isn’t one of those stories, Avice. One moment of cack-handedness, Captain Cook offends the bloody locals, one slip of the tongue or misuse of sacred cutlery, and bang, he’s on the grill. Do you ever think how self-aggrandising that stuff is? Oh, all those stories pretend to be mea culpas about cultural insensitivity, oops we said the wrong thing, but they’re really all about how ridiculous natives overreact.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“Oratees are addicts. Strung out on an Ambassador’s Language.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“Tell me," Bren said. "I thought you'd despaired."
"I did, too."
"What then? Tell me."
I told him. Revelation was spoiled for him, but I can retain it here, for you.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
China Miéville
Born place: in Norwich, England, The United Kingdom
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“Hessen? Dr. Mengele. Everything’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about. Exactly the amateur I expected. I don’t think he even understood German. Send the boys home to practice their signatures; it was just an excitement to round off the evening. No, not till 1977, I’m afraid; I fly back to the compound as soon as we clean up. So go with God, Horst. And say it for me to the others: ‘Go with God.’” He hung up and said, “Heil Hitler.”
― Ira Levin, quote from The Boys from Brazil
“Then it was this big thing. She was like, 'I never want to see you again', and I was like, 'Fine. Okay? Fine. Then get some special goggles.”
― M.T. Anderson, quote from Feed
“When weary day does shed its light, I rest my head and dream, I ride the great dark bird of night, so tranquil and serene. Then I can touch the moon afar, which smiles up in the sky, and steal a twinkle from each star, as we go winging by. We’ll fly the night to dawning light, and wait ’til dark has ceased, to marvel at the wondrous sight, of sunrise in the east. So slumber on, my little one, float soft as thistledown, and wake to see when night is done, fair morning’s golden gown.”
― Brian Jacques, quote from Loamhedge
“even high,” she said with a roll”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Northern Lights
“The worst thing about affirmative action is that it encourages reverse discrimination, so-called because it goes in the opposite way of how we naturally discriminate.”
― Stephen Colbert, quote from I Am America (And So Can You!)
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