Quotes from The Broken Kingdoms

“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 from The Broken Kingdoms

“Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“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 from The Broken Kingdoms

“Rising from the dead? Glowing at sunrise? What did that make him, the god of cheerful mornings and macabre surprises?”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“They live forever. But many of them are even more lonely and miserable than we are. Why do you think they bother with us? We teach them life's value.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“Loneliness is a darkness of the soul”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“He was dead again when I got home that day. His corpse was in the kitchen, near the counter, where it appeared he'd been chopping vegetables when the urge to stab himself through the wrist had struck. I slipped on the blood coming in, which annoyed me because that meant it was all over the kitchen floor.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“Of course I was enough, because he loved me. That was the whole point.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“I have decided to live,” he said quietly.
That, too, was obvious from the way he’d changed in the past year. I felt his gaze as he spoke, heavier than usual along my skin. He had been my friend, and now offered more. Was willing to try more. But I knew: he was not the sort of man who loved easily, or casually. If I wanted him, I would have all of him, and he wanted all of me. All or nothing; that was as fundamental to his nature as light itself.
I tried to joke. “It took you a year to decide that?”
“Ten, yes,” Shiny replied. “This last year was for you to decide.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“If the gods do decide to wipe us out, is it such a bad thing? Maybe we've earned a little annihilation.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“Because I think I saw you, yesterday morning when I woke up. I think my eyes worked again, just for a moment, and you were the light I saw.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“Oree," she would say whenever I sought to prove my independence, "it's all right to need help. All of us have things we can't do alone.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“We began to call ourselves Maroneh, which meant "those who weep for Maro" in the common language we once spoke. We named our daughters for sorrow and our sons for rage; we debated whether there was any point in trying to rebuild our race. We thanked Itempas for saving even the handful of us who remained, and we hated the Arameri for making that prayer necessary.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“But when I got angry, my nerves sought an outlet, and my mouth didn't always guard the gates.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“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 from The Broken Kingdoms

“Ya conoces la verdad sobre Itempas. Es el dios del calor y de la luz, que todos consideramos cosas agradables y delicadas. Yo antes también lo veía así. Pero el calor, si no se enfría, quema y la luz, si nada la eclipsa, puede lastimar hasta unos ojos ciegos como los míos. Tendría que haberme dado cuenta. Tendríamos que habernos dado cuenta todos. Él nunca fue lo que queríamos que fuese.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“Las buenas intenciones carecen de sentido sin el deseo de llevarlas a la práctica”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“El brillo ha sido vuestra paz, vuestra prosperidad, no la de los demás.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“-El cambio existe -dije en medio de un bostezo-.Tenemos que aceptarlo.
-No -replicó él-. No tenemos por qué. Yo nunca lo hice. Oree, yo soy la luz permanente que mantiene a raya la hirviente oscuridad. La roca inamovible que el río tiene que rodear. Puede que no te guste yo. Pero sin mi influencia, este reino sería la anarquía, el caos. Un infierno más allá de la imaginación de los mortales.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“-Puede que haya un modo de que escapemos de este lugar -dijo Lúmino al día siguiente.
(...)
-¿Cómo? -pregunté, pero entonces se me ocurrió una idea-. Tu magia. la recuperas cuando me proteges.
-Sí.
(...)
-Pero ahora estoy en peligro... Lo estoy desde que me secuestraron los Luces. -Y no había ni el menor destello de magia en él.
-Puede que sea una cuestión de medida. O puede que haga falta una amenaza física.
Suspiré. Estaba deseando tener esperanzas.
-Muchos "puede" son ésos. Supongo que nadie tuvo la delicadeza de darte unas instrucciones sobre cómo... funcionas ahora, ¿verdad?
-No.
-¿Pues qué propones, entonces? ¿Ataco a Serymn, y cuando me responda, vuelas la casa por los aires y nos matas a todos?
Hubo un momento de pausa. Creo que mi sarcasmo lo molestaba.
-En esencia, sí. Pero no sería muy lógico que te matara a ti, así que limitaré la cantidad de fuerza que utilice.
-Agradezco tu consideración, Lúmino, en serio.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“La soledad es la oscuridad del alma”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“... la luz depende de la presencia de otras luces. Si las quitas, el resultado es la oscuridad. Pero lo contrario no es cierto: si eliminas la oscuridad, el resultado es solo más oscuridad. La oscuridad puede existir por si sola. La luz no.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“Do you try to pick up all the mortal girls you almost kill?"
“Just the ones who don’t scream and run,” he said. And then he startled me further by touching my face, just under one eye. I tensed just a little, as I always did when someone noticed my eyes. Bracing myself for the if only.
But there was no revulsion in his gaze and nothing but fascination in his touch. “And the ones with pretty eyes,” he added.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“eyes whose color I would never be able to fully describe, even if I someday learn the words. The best I can do is compare it to things I do know: the heavy thickness of red gold, the smell of brass on a hot day, desire and pride.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“I was growing used to him, I realized bitterly. That had hurt far less than I’d expected.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“Perhaps we mortals actually have more than five senses. Perhaps along with taste and smell and the rest there is detecting the special. I see the specialness with my eyes, but others do it in some different way.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“Though it would not be the first lie our family has told until it forgot the truth.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

“I had never seen a godling child before, but I had an inkling they were not all that different from human children. Human children could be merciless, especially when they had power.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Broken Kingdoms

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Popular quotes

“Dear Oscar

I don’t know how to say this any other way but, you see, I need to explain something. I can’t stop thinking about that night when you rescued Barney with you tart – and how good and kind I realise you’ve always been. It wasn’t until this morning when you sent me an apple tart of my own that I finally knew what it is that I have to tell you.
The timing is pretty terrible, but, you see, the reason I haven’t wanted to go away is because I’ve wanted to stay here, and the reason I’ve wanted to stay here is because of you.
I’ve nothing against New Zealand or anything but because of how I feel, specifically about you, the whole world looks different.
I don’t know whether it’s because of everything has got darker or lighter. I guess that depends on how you feel about me which is, I hope, the same.
So anyways, look, you’ve convinced me that I should, as you say ‘embrace the adventure’ so that is what I have decided to do. It was the taste of you apple tart that finally made up my mind to give this my all. But I need to know you’ll be here when I come back.
I love you Oscar Dunleavy.
I’ve been falling in love with you since that day we first met.
I need to have some idea about whether you feel the same way about me. Send me a sign.
Anything will do.
Love,
Meg”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, quote from The Apple Tart of Hope

“A woman with legs up to my chest emerged from one of the illustrious establishments. She was shaped like an hourglass, but had the shrunken face of a mummy.”
― Julian North, quote from Age of Order

“That’s the thing, Alexis. I see you looking at me the way you do. Like we could be somethin’. And I want it so fucking bad. To be something to you. To be good for you. But I ruined that possibility a long time ago and I’m not sure there are enough pieces left to give any of them to you. That’s my truth.”
― A.L. Jackson, quote from Stand

“But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“At the base of the immense pillar, tiny Babylon was in shadow. Then the darkness climbed the tower, like a canopy unfurling upward. It moved slowly enough that Hillalum felt he could count the moments passing, but then it grew faster as it approached, until it raced past them faster than he could blink, and they were in twilight... For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky.”
― Ted Chiang, quote from Stories of Your Life and Others

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