Quotes by N.K. Jemisin

The priests lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortals doom. My grandmothers lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.

Only learning oneself better, and understanding one’s place in the world, made the touch of another mundane.

No voting on who gets to be people.

The children of the Fulcrum are all different: different ages, different colors, different shapes. Some speak Sanze-mat with different accents, having originated from different parts of the world. One girl has sharp teeth because it is her races custom to file them; another boy has no penis, though he stuffs a sock into his underwear after every shower; another girl has rarely had regular meals and wolfs down every one like shes still starving. (The instructors keep finding food hidden in and around her bed. They make her eat it, all of it, in front of them, even if it makes her sick.) One cannot reasonably expect sameness out of so much difference, and it makes no sense for Damaya to be judged by the behavior of children who share nothing save the curse of orogeny with her.

Her eyes are shockingly black - shocking not because black eyes are particularly rare, but because shes wearing smoky gray eyeshadow and dark eyeliner to accentuate them further. Makeup, while the world is ending.

“I remembered Nahadoths lips on my throat and fought to suppress a shudder, only half succeeding. Death as a consequence of lying with a god wasnt something I had considered, but it did not surprise me. A mortal mans 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 womans head into the clouds, he might try ten that brought her back to earth.”