How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?

— N.K. Jemisin

How terrible to be a god of change and endure grief unending.

— N.K. Jemisin

I definitely haven’t been in the best place while working on this book, but I can say this much: Where there is pain in this book, it is real pain; where there is anger, it is real anger; where there is love, it is real love. You’ve been taking this journey with me, and you’re always going to get the best of what I’ve got. That’s what my mother would want.

— N.K. Jemisin

If the first words out of your mouth are to cry ‘political correctness!’, … chances are very, very high that you are in fact part of the problem.

— N.K. Jemisin

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

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

Inevitable is not the same as immediate, Said--and love does not mandate forgiveness.

— N.K. Jemisin

In the future, as in the present, as in the past, black people will build many new worlds. This is true. I will make it so. And you will help me.

— N.K. Jemisin

I remembered Nazareth'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

I think,' HOA says slowly, 'that if you love someone, you don't get to choose how they love you back.

— N.K. Jemisin