The City We Became (Great Cities, #1)

by N.K. Jemisin

Shut your fucking mouth! someone yells, so I take a bow and exit the stage.

Guy likes hearing himself talk. I like his accent; it’s sort of nasal and sibilant, nothing like a Spanish speaker’s.

I could get away with so much shit if I had permanent puppy eyes like that.

liquid black on rough lilac, red edging the black. I’m painting a hole. It’s like a throat that doesn’t start with a mouth or end in lungs; a thing that breathes and swallows endlessly, never filling.

I don’t have to believe in something for it to fuck up my life.

I’m the midwife, see.

“The harbingers of the Enemy will hide among the city’s parasites. Beware of them.”

What good does it do to be valuable, if nobody values you?

Libraries are safe places.

There’re cops in body armor over by the subway entrance, showing off their guns to the tourists so they’ll feel safe from New York.

both in blue like black—

Daddy would’ve said it was okay—tears mean you’re alive—but Daddy’s dead. And I’m alive.

Instead, it’s like I’m not there. Miracles exist, Ralph Ellison was right, any NYPD you can walk away from, hallelujah.

Don’t sleep on the city that never sleeps, son, and don’t fucking bring your squamous eldritch bullshit here.

New Yorkers eat damn near as much sushi as Tokyo, mercury and all.

I backhand its ass with Hoboken, raining the drunk rage of ten thousand dudebros down on it like the hammer of God.

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.

rudely not lifting it or moving it aside because I’m walking here, I have the right of way and he’s playing metaphysical sidewalk chicken with this violent, invasive tourist—