Nora K. Jemisin Quotes

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.

It's human nature that we come in our own flavours, and it doesn't make any sense to write a monochromatic or monocultural story unless you're doing something extremely small – a locked room-style story.

I would love to just write and not have everything I say or do turn into a political battle.

I write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history.

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.

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

I was raised to be very wary of the police. I was raised to stay away from them unless you absolutely have to. Because they're dangerous.

Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.

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.

It's hard out here for a fantasy writer, after all; there's all these 'rules' I'm supposed to follow, or the Fantasy Police might come and make me do hard labor in the Cold Iron Mines.

It takes practice to do anything unique within this field, period, in writing, practice doing anything unique in writing.

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China is a great country with a great culture, populated by fascinating, industrious and talented people.

Any writer kind of who knows what they're doing goes forth and grabs a copy of an issue of something that they want to be published in, or they skim it online. They read what that market has been doing. They see a particular flavor of fiction.

Art isn't held with the same high regard as it is after success. In any country, in any language, you're a loser if you're making music until you prove otherwise.

I think shortly after I got signed, it just started to dawn on me that I had something to say and that Yahweh put something in my heart to share with the world.

Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I'd go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I'd sing and play.

Nora K. Jemisin Quotes

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