The Drowned Cities Quotes

“The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Your body is full of rage. Every sinew. It is easy to read. You speak volumes with a clenched fist.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“When you were alone in the rising ocean, you grabbed whatever raft passed by.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“The thought burrowed into her heart as darkness fell. It coiled in her guts as she wedged herself amongst the boughs of a tree to sleep. And in the morning, it woke with her and clung to her back, riding on her shoulders as she climbed down, hungry and exhausted from nightmares.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Some things, it was better not to think about. It just made you mad and angry.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“They’d blame a castoff just for breathing. You could be good as gold and they’d still blame you.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Pain held no terror for him. Pain was, if not friend, then family, something he had grown up with in his crèche, learning to respect but never yield to. Pain was simply a message, telling him which limbs he could still use to slaughter his enemies, how far he could still run, and what his chances were in the next battle.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“It only takes a few politicians to stoke division, or a few demagogues encouraging hatred to set your kind upon one another. And then before you know it, you have a whole nation biting on its own tail, going round and round until there is nothing left but the snapping of teeth.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Never beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“You couldn’t live close to war and not have it grab you eventually.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“But then, that was the problem with pretty toy stitches. When real life got hold of them, they always tore out.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“No one else noticed, or cared. It was just something they did. Taking other people’s livestock. Other people’s lives. She watched the soldiers, hating them. They were different in so many ways, white and black, yellow and brown, skinny, short, tall, small, but they were all the same. Didn’t matter if they wore finger-bone necklaces, or baby teeth on bracelets, or tattoos on their chests to ward off bullets. In the end, they were all mangled with battle scars and their eyes were all dead.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“When people fight for ideals, no price is too high, and no fight can be surrendered. They aren't fighting for money, or power, or control. Not really. They're fighting to destroy their enemies.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“The Drowned Cities hadn’t always been broken. People broke it. First they called people traitors and said they didn’t belong. Said these people were good and those people were evil, and it kept going, because people always responded, and pretty soon the place was a roaring hell because no one took responsibility for what they did, and how it would drive others to respond.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Soldiers have been looting and burning for generations. Perhaps they burned the town because of you, or perhaps they did it because they disliked the whiskey. Soldiers kill and rape and loot for a thousand reasons. The one thing I am certain of is that neither you nor I did this burning.” Tool reached down and turned Mahlia’s gaze to meet his own. “Do not seek to own what others have done.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Knowing all and having the necessary tools are two different things. This is hardly a hospital. We make do with what we have, and none of that is Mahlia’s fault. Tani is the victim of many evils, but Mahlia is not the beginning of that chain, nor the end. I am responsible, if anyone is.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Mahlia… understood Doctor Mahfouz and his blind rush into the village. He wasn’t trying to change them. He wasn’t trying to save anyone. He was just trying to not be part of the sickness. Mahlia had thought he was stupid for walking straight into death, but now, as she lay against the pillar, she saw it differently. She thought she’d been surviving. She thought that she’d been fighting for herself. But all she’d done was create more killing, and in the end it had all led to this moment, where they bargained with a demon … not for their lives, but for their souls” (p. 403)”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“You think you are some fine predator? A swamp panther or coywolv?” He pretended to inspect her. “Where are your teeth and claws, girl?” He bared his teeth. “Where is your bite?”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Tool wondered if the girl was going mad. It happened to people. Sometimes they saw too much and their minds went away. They lost the will to survive. They curled up and surrendered to madness.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“If she had been born in another place, during another time, he supposed she might have been the sort of girl who concerned herself with boyfriends and parties and fashionable clothes. If she had lived in a Boston arcology or a Beijing super tower, perhaps. Instead, she carried scars, and her hand was a stump, and her eyes were hard like obsidian, and her smile was hesitant, as if anticipating the suffering that she knew awaited her, just around the corner.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Lock it away,” the half-man whispered. “You feel, after. Not now. Now you are a soldier. Now you do your duty for your pack. If you break, your Mouse will die, and you with him. Feel, after. Not now.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Her father would return from China. He’d come back with all his soldiers. He’d pick her up in his strong arms and say that he’d never meant to leave, that he hadn’t meant to sail away and leave her and her mother alone in the canals of the Drowned Cities as the Army of God and the UPF and the Freedom Militia came down like a hammer on every single person who’d ever trafficked with the peacekeepers. A stupid little dream for a stupid little war maggot. Mahlia hated herself for dreaming it. But sometimes she curled in on herself and held the stump of her right hand to her chest and pretended that none of it had happened. That her father was still here, and she still had a hand, and everything was going to get better.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“If I was strategic, I would have figured out how to get out of this place. Would have seen everything falling apart and got out while there were still ships to sail.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“You call me castoff,” Mahlia said, “Chinese throwaway, whatever.” Amaya was trying to look away, but Mahlia had her pinned, kept her eye to eye. “My old man might have been peacekeeper, but my mom was pure Drowned Cities. You want to war like that, I’m all in.” Mahlia lifted the scarred stump of her right hand, shoved it up in Amaya’s face. “Maybe I cut you the way the Army of God cut me. See how you do with just a lucky left. How’d you like that?”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Mahlia just waited. She was good at that. When you were a castoff, it didn’t do any good trying to talk to people, but sometimes, if you just kind of waited them out, people would get uncomfortable and feel like they had to do something.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Save your shaming for the girl, Doctor. If I cared for human approval, I would have been dead long ago.” He turned and started wading into the swamp. “Time is passing. I, for one, have no intention of remaining here for your betrayer to bring back the soldiers and their guns.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“Running. She was always running. Like a rabbit chased by coywolv. Always hunting for some new safe bolt hole, and every time, the soldier boys found her, and forced her to rabbit again. The doctor was wrong. There was no place to hide, and she’d never be safe as long as she remained close to the Drowned Cities.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities