The Inheritance Trilogy Quotes

“Choose how your nature shapes you. Embrace it. Find the strength in it.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“Nothing is more dangerous than fearful people with a fresh taste of power.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“When things are bad, change is good, right? Change means things will get better.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“But perhaps that was just the way of power: no such thing as too much.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“The lifts get confused sometimes, carrying riders where they want to be rather than where they intend to go. (I’m told this was especially a problem for lovesick couriers.)”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“MORTAL LIFE IS CYCLES. Day and night. Seasons. Waking and sleep. This cyclical nature was built into all mortal creatures by Enefa, and the humans have refined it further by building their cultures to suit. Work, home. Months become years, years shift from past to future. They count endlessly, these creatures. It is this which marks the difference between them and us, I think, far more than magic and death.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“I found it perversely comforting that she had tried to kill me at birth.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“I pushed myself away from the wall. “My mother lived truer to the Bright than you ever could!” Dekarta stopped, and for a heartbeat I felt fear, realizing I had gone too far. But he did not turn back. “That is true,” Dekarta said, his voice very soft. “Your mother wouldn’t have shown any mercy at all.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“Mortals are the sum of many things, Sieh. They are what circumstance has made them and what they wish to be. If you must hate them, hate them for the latter, not the former. At least they have some say over that part.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“I closed my eyes and traced my mother's face against my memory for the ten thousandth time.”
― N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy Series 3 Books Set – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods

“I will laugh when you're dead," he said softly. The small hairs along my skin prickled, for his voice was a grown man's now, tenor malevolence. "I will claim your heart as a toy and kick it for a hundred years. And when I am finally free, I will hunt down all your descendants and make their children just like me.”
― N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy Series 3 Books Set – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods

“It isn't your fault." Sieh sounded unhappy. "We just need to explain, and she'll understand.”
― N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy Series 3 Books Set – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods

“I especially like your face. You don't showc much emotion - is that a Darre thing or your mother's traning?- but when you di, all the world can read it.”
― N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy Series 3 Books Set – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods

“On the one occassion that I risked a glance back, I saw the gentle glow of the hallway fade into a throat of black so deep looking that way hurt the eye. I did not look back again.”
― N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy Series 3 Books Set – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods

“So be good," the priests would add, "or the Nightlord will get you.”
― N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy Series 3 Books Set – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods

“As Lord Dekarta said, Lady Yeine - all descendants of Shahar Arameri must serve. One way or another.”
― N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy Series 3 Books Set – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods

“The Enefadeh are the reason we wear blood sigils, Lady Yeine. No one may pass the night in Sky without one. It isn't safe.”
― N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy Series 3 Books Set – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods

“She abandoned here to dally with her sweet-tongued savage. I allowed this - an indulgence I have often regretted. So I will assuage that regret by bringing you back into the fold, Granddaughter. Whether you live or die is irrelevant. You are Arameri, and like all of us, you will serve.”
― N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy Series 3 Books Set – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods

“My dour companion snorted. “A few millennia worth, from a few pockets of humanity, nothing more. And that picked and sorted, trimmed and twisted to suit the tastes of those in power.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“They found so many ways to lie about the things they did. It mocked the suffering of their victims.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“Don’t be stupid,” I said, focusing on mundanities. “It takes great strength to compromise, Shahar. More than it does to threaten and destroy, since you must fight your own pride as well as the enemy.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“I can ponder for an eternity. I am dead. I have all the time I want. But I was never very patient.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“It’s solitude, then?” I asked. “That’s your true antithesis, not darkness. You didn’t realize?” “No. Not until that day.” He lowered his hand. “But I should have realized. Loneliness is a darkness of the soul.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“The paint is a door,” my father says.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“It said you liked to kill people, back when you lived here. You would do tricks on them, sometimes funny tricks… but sometimes people would die.” Still funny, I thought, but perhaps this was not the time to say such things aloud.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“Drug dealer, then.” “I prefer the term independent apothecary”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“Without a Trickster the universe will not end, but it will be a much duller place.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“But as the Interdiction has shown us, the gods function perfectly well whether we believe in them or not, so why devote all that energy to a pointless purpose?”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“floor entrance.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy

“Enefa had also given them dreams to teach them about themselves and their universe. Few of them ever listened to the lessons—a total waste of creation in my eyes—but thanks to that, I would have to endure these mind-farts every time I slept. Lovely.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy