The City We Became Quotes

“People who say change is impossible are usually pretty happy with things just as they are.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“He pretends to be less special than he is, because the world has punished him for loving himself.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“This is the lesson: Great cities are like any other living things, being born and maturing and wearying and dying in their turn.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Come, then, City That Never Sleeps. Let me show you what lurks in the empty spaces where nightmares dare not tread.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Nothing human beings do is set in stone--and even stone changes, anyway. We can change, too, anything about ourselves that we want to. We just have to want to. People who say change is impossible are usually pretty happy with things just as they are.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“And just to add insult to injury? I backhand its ass with Hoboken, raining the drunk rage of ten thousand dudebros down on it like the hammer of God. Port Authority makes it honorary New York, motherfucker; you just got Jerseyed.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Real gods aren’t what most of you Christians think of as gods. Gods are people. Sometimes dead people, sometimes still alive. Sometimes never lived.” She shrugs. “They do jobs—bring fortune, look after people, make sure the world works as it should. They fall in love. Have babies. Fight. Die.” She shrugs. “It’s duty. It’s normal. Get over it.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“I don’t know where old girl found a bikini that big, but she’s got maximum Don’t Give A Fuck mode engaged, and I’m surfing on her bitch wave.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Only the bodegas stand open, sentinels of The City That Never Sleeps And Occasionally Needs Milk At Two A.M.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Back when Aislyn was a teenager, she often thought of her mother as dull. Since then Aislyn has come to understand that women sometimes have to pretend to be dull so that the men around them can feel sharper.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“He’s been here one hour, but already he feels like he has never lived anywhere else. And even if he doesn’t know who he was… he knows who he is.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Home isn't where the heart is; it's wherever the wind feels right.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“It was important, they'd told her, to know where her food came from, and to understand that not just one, but many deaths had enabled her survival. Therefore it was crucial that she use every part of the animal, as much as she could, and take no more than she needed. To kill under those circumstances, or to survive, was respectful. To kill for any other reason was monstrous.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“But then you meet somebody fine at the neighborhood block party, or you go out for Vietnamese perogies or some other bizarre shit that you can't get anywhere but in this dumb-ass city, or you go see an off-off-off-Broadway fringe festival that nobody else has seen, or you have a random encounter on the subway that becomes something so special and beautiful that you'll tell your grandkids about it someday.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“these people are always gonna tell themselves that a little fascism is okay as long as they can still get unlimited drinks with brunch!”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Coldness would be reprehensible, horrifying. Compassion is worse, because it cannot be dismissed as evil.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Skippy the tentacle monster sends her little bigot fuckbois to harass you on the internet? Like, is that how Lovecraftian horror works now, because… I can’t…”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“So, here’s the thing,” she tells them. “All of that stuff is true. All the other worlds that human beings believe in, via group myths or spiritual visitations or even imaginations if they’re vivid enough, they exist. Imagining a world creates it, if it isn’t already there. That’s the great secret of existence: it’s supersensitive to thought. Decisions, wishes, lies—that’s all you need to create a new universe. Every human being on this planet spins off thousands between birth and death, although there’s something about the way our minds work that keeps us from noticing. In every moment, we’re constantly moving in multiple dimensions—we think we’re sitting still, but we’re actually falling from one universe to the next to the next, so fast that it all blends together, like… like animation. Except there’s a lot more than just images flipping past.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“she had a gentle soul wrapped in razor wire, but the sharp edges are not her fault. The world trained her to violence, to ferocity, because it hates so much of what she is.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“The world can't hurt you if you just ignore everything that's wrong with it. Well, not until it kills you anyway.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Money talks and bullshit walks in New York. In a lot of cities, probably—but here, the nation’s shrine to unrestricted predatory capitalism, money has nearly talismanic power. Which means that he can use it as a talisman.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“You're very optimistic for a possible serial killer. I like that about you.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“I don’t have to believe in something for it to fuck up my life.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“What we are, what we’re made of, is many worlds coming together. Reality and legends. This world where we’re just people, and that world, where we can be miles-wide cities that just happen to be sitting a couple of feet across from each other because the laws of space, physics, don’t work the same way.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“And here in this other realm she looms over him, vast and sprawling, wildly patchwork and dense. Not just older and bigger. Stronger in many ways: her arms and core are thick with muscled neighborhoods that each have their own rhythms and reputations. Williamsburg, Hasidim enclave and artist haven turned hipster ground zero. Bed Stuy (do or die). Crown Heights, where now the only riots are over seats at brunch. Her jaw is tight with the stubborn ferocity of Brighton Beach's old mobsters and the Rockaways' working-class holdouts against the brutal inevitability of rising seas. But there are spires at Brooklyn's heart, too- perhaps not as grand as his own, and maybe some of hers are actually the airy, fanciful amusement-park towers of Coney Island- but all are just as shining, just as sharp.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Libraries are safe places.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Don’t sleep on the city that never sleeps, son, and don’t fucking bring your squamous eldritch bullshit here.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Innocence is nothing but a ceremony, after all. So strange that you people venerate it the way you do. What other world celebrates not knowing anything about how life really works?”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“I hate this city." Veneza laughs. "Yeah, well, you New Yorkers—everybody except the new ones—always say that. It's dirty and there's too many cars and nothing's maintained the way it should be and it's too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter and it stinks like unwashed ass most of the time. But ever notice how none of you ever fucking leave?”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“Back then, she had to worry about the government tapping her phone. It still probably does, but all the other stuff's been outsourced. Now, instead of just a COINTELPRO operation, she’s got to worry about that and some dude stalking her relatives from his mother’s basement, and kids bombarding her with death threats because it makes them feel like part of the (terrorist) gang, and a troll farm in Russia using the Center as the next cause célèbre to whip up Nazis. All the people who really are a threat to the country; somehow they’ve been convinced to do its dirty work, more or less for free. She would admire it if it weren’t so damn horrific.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became