Nora K. Jemisin Quotes

This is magic we're talking about. It's supposed to go places science can't, defy logic, wink at technology, fill us all with the sensawunda that comes of gazing upon a fictional world and seeing something truly different from our own.

I've always believed that as an artist, as a writer, you need a lot of contact with other people to make your art good.

I tend to like writing characters that are not typical heroes.

To some degree, as I move outside of the exclusive genre audience, the exclusive genre issues don't bother me as much. Maybe that's just speculation.

I don't really understand why so many fantasy writers choose to focus on worlds that just seem strangely denuded. But to them, I guess it doesn't seem strange. And I guess that's their privilege. It isn't mine.

A fantasy novel set in something other than medieval Europe, featuring an almost entirely black cast, is considered risky.

All people who grew up with science fiction and fantasy and horror went through the whole acculturation process of the genre. We were all told to read the golden age writers. We were all told Heinlein and Asimov and all these straight, white males, although some of them were Jewish.

Within the sphere of steampunk, there seems to be a rapidly growing subsphere of gadgetless 'neo-Victorian' novels, most of which attempt to recapture the romance of the era without all the sociopolitical ugliness.

I think the people who believe that works can and always should be divorced from the context are people who have the privilege to do so.

There's a thriving field of self-published stuff in, particularly, black fiction. I don't know that other groups of people of color have that same recourse.

There's a tendency in American thought – maybe elsewhere, but that's the culture I know best – to default to social Darwinism, even though even Darwin noted that's a misapplication of his ideas.

Quotes of the Hour

Some people are gonna hate anything; they're gonna hate when anybody tries to go or do anything, and that's usually the people who don't ever create anything themselves.

The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief – call it what you will – than any book ever written. It has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor-bicycle and golf course.

The biggest trade that Germany and Britain had was with each other, in the prewar period; I think I'm right in that. Two highly industrialized nations had the most trade with each other, and it wasn't tariff policies alone that made trade relations better for both of them.

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words, like 'What about lunch?'

I think Stalin was afraid of Roosevelt. Whenever Roosevelt spoke, he sort of watched him with a certain awe. He was afraid of Roosevelt's influence in the world.

Nora K. Jemisin Quotes

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