Katrina > Katrina's Quotes

“Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.”
― bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love

“And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow do a disservice to my own reality by paying so much attention to the power fantasies of disenchanted white men?

But. Epic fantasy is not merely what Tolkien made it.

This genre is rooted in the epic — and the truth is that there are plenty of epics out there which feature people like me. Sundiata’s badass mother. Dihya, warrior queen of the Amazighs. The Rain Queens. The Mino Warriors. Hatshepsut’s reign. Everything Harriet Tubman ever did. And more, so much more, just within the African components of my heritage. I haven’t even begun to explore the non-African stuff. So given all these myths, all these examinations of the possible… how can I not imagine more? How can I not envision an epic set somewhere other than medieval England, about someone other than an awkward white boy? How can I not use every building-block of my history and heritage and imagination when I make shit up?

And how dare I disrespect that history, profane all my ancestors’ suffering and struggles, by giving up the freedom to imagine that they’ve won for me.”
― N.K. Jemisin

“Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.”
― Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know

“Nowadays I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.”
― Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

“Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“I wish there was someone I could have written to after that, someone I could have written to explain how awful it was to have someone touch you, then look at you properly and change his mind.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.”
― Toni Morrison

“I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes.”
― Toni Morrison

“My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving – I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you … I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder’d at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr’d for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you.”
― John Keats, Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

“When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.”
― Maya Angelou

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie