Quotes from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“But love like that doesn't just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always a little love left, underneath.
Yes. Horrible, isn't it?”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“There's truth even in tainted knowledge, if one reads carefully.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“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, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“Fortunately, where reason failed, blind panic served well enough.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“The priest's lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal's doom. My grandmother's lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I tire of your whining.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“...and when I lift my head to scream out my fury, a million stars turn black and die. No one can see them, but they are my tears.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“Once upon a time there was a

Once upon a time there was a

Once upon a time there was a

Stop this. It's undignified.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“You are Insignificant. One of millions, neither special nor unique. I did not ask for this ignominy, and I resent the comparison.
Fine. I don't you like you, either.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“There is nothing foolish about hope.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore.
I must try to remember.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“I remembered Nahadoth's lips on my throat and fought to suppress a shudder, only half succeeding. Death as a consequence of lying with a god wasn't something I had considered, but it did not surprise me. A mortal man's strength had its limits. He spent himself and slept. He could be a good lover, but even his best skills were only guesswork - for every caress that sent a woman's head into the clouds, he might try ten that brought her back to earth.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“So there was love, once. More than love. And now there is more than hate. Mortals have no words for what we gods feel. Gods have no words for such things. But love like that doesn't just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always love left, underneath. Horrible, isn't it?”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“The Nightlord cannot be controlled, child. He can only be unleashed. And you asked him not to kill.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“The younger man stepped away from the table and came toward me, his whole posture radiating menace. Every Darre woman is taught to deal with such behavior from men. It is an animal trick that they use, like dogs ruffling their fur and growling. Only rarely is there an actual threat behind it, and a woman's strength lies in discerning when the threat is real and when it is just hair and noise.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“And in that sliver of time, I felt the power around me coalesce, malice-hard and sharp as crystal.

That this analogy occurred to me should have been a warning.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“It was very bad if the council had resorted to recruiting men. By tradition men were our last line of defence, 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 defence was to defeat the enemy, period. Anything else meant the end of Darre.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“Separarse de la tierra y contemplarla desde arriba como los dioses es una blasfemia. No podemos ser dioses... pero podemos llegar a ser menos que humanos con aterradora facilidad.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“Whether you live or die is irrelevant. You are Arameri, and like all of us, you will serve.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“beware love, especially the wrong man”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“De esta materia prima están hechos los grandes cuentos, ¿no? Puro romanticismo. En los cuentos, las parejas así viven felices para siempre. Pero los cuentos no dicen lo que sucede cuando se hace eso y se ofende a la familia más poderosa del mundo.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“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, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“It is important to give just the right instructions. He thinks in loopholes.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“In a child’s eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“Men who served anyone could be trusted by no one.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“The Darren language has a word for the attraction one feels to danger: esui. It is esui that makes warriors charge into hopeless battles and die laughing. Esui is also what draws women to lovers who are bad for them--men who would make poor fathers, women of the enemy.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

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“One day or one night—between my days and nights, what difference can there be?—I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the floor of my cell. Unconcerned, I went back to sleep; I dreamed that I woke up and there were two grains of sand. Again I slept; I dreamed that now there were three. Thus the grains of sand multiplied, little by little, until they filled the cell and I was dying beneath that hemisphere of sand. I realized that I was dreaming; with a vast effort I woke myself. But waking up was useless—I was suffocated by the countless sand. Someone said to me:

You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of the grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.

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— Jorge Luis Borges, The Writing of the God”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Aleph and Other Stories

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