The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories Quotes

“The circle that they drew was laid with fresh petals from the cherry tree on a bed of salt...”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“...you surrounded yourself with people who nodded at you, who protected you, until your own mind gave way under the weight of your own pig-headedness.”
― James Smythe, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“We rise and our wings are flame.
We rise and our food is air. We
rise and we are heat and we are
light, and we are dark and we
are bright, and we lick the wind
with our thousand fiery tongues.
We rise from the wizard-nation's
wreck.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Wishing for love is the same as wishing for more wishes.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“I see the ratty dressing gown had gone; she's also wearing a pretty floral dress and her hair is shining pale as opals.”
― Kirsty Logan, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“The kitchen light gleams on her pale hair, on the silk covering her shoulders.”
― Kirsty Logan, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“The Pink Panther had been playing on the old antennae TV. He remembered how the slinky, suggestive saxophone triggered something abstractly pleasurable in his child-self.”
― Sophia Al-Maria, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“The power I exert, I do so because I am wise, and clever, and know something of the turning of the world.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Just enough heat to smooth, not enough to scorch... Careful judgment, minute by minute.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Memory depends on the medium, I thought; brains are such imperfect recorders. I”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“The rifle in this story is a rifle full of wishes. Maybe all rifles seem to be that, at least for a moment, when they’re new, before any finger has touched any trigger. Maybe all rifles seem as though they might grant a person the only thing they’ve ever wanted.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“You treat that Mama Abassi like your second mother," it had said. "But you don't ever wonder if she's just keeping you under control? Or even making use of your talents?”
― Nnedi Okorafor, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“And now because you are converged, you rise. Through the eye of the narrowest tangle of root, shoot, and branch, past the tallest emerald treetops, up and up, gathering strength. A curlicue of mystery, a calligram of power, you wrap yourself around yourself and tornado to the Saigol mansion, quaking that mausoleum of a hatchery in your wake.”
― Usman Malik, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“He is a scrawny broomstick of a boy in dusky shalwar kameez with holes - filthy wild hair, bruised lips, skulking face.”
― Usman Malik, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“He told me my whole life happened because I got things other people weren't using, and since he's been gone I've lived my whole life on that same principle. He told me a lot of things, and the most important of those things is never, ever to use the word wish.”
― Kirsty Logan, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“He won't clear his stuff out, but he won't let me sell any of it. Honestly, he's a fucking - he's such a fucking -”
― Kirsty Logan, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“I say nothing, so she can assume I'm feeling whatever emotion she wants me to feel.”
― Kirsty Logan, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“I go out most nights. There's always something new to find. Always something unneeded that I need.”
― Kirsty Logan, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“What do you know of death? I have asked him.
I've lived it, he says.”
― James Smythe, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“You have embraced silence. Your wings make no sound. Language is for prey, for what the wizard-nation hunts. You are not prey, not anymore.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“You get one wish, the smoke said.
And so Yoth wished.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Are you the devil?" Yoth Begail whispered. "Am I the devil?”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Maybe it was for the better. Teach them early that dreams and wishes are things that bring only pain, that nothing comes for free, that for every piece of good fortune, somehow and somewhere the universe will balance itself out with misfortune.”
― J.Y. Yang, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“A world of hot wind and bursting stars”
― J.Y. Yang, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Mena wondered if her grandmother, the djinn, had ever thought of reshaping the world so it was more amenable to her. A world of hot wind and bursting stars, where women walked strong and brown and proud over land that sang to their bones, where the fires that burned in their veins were lights in the firmament and not threats to be smothered into nothingness at all costs.”
― J.Y. Yang, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Peoples desires were easy to read, clear as bottled glass and just as sturdy.”
― J.Y. Yang, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“How simple our wants are as children, how easily satisfied.”
― J.Y. Yang, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“The iron bars of a cage can be kind of a comfort when the world outside is all hungry teeth and slicing fins.”
― J.Y. Yang, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“The blessed lives of model-types, banking on the envy of the unwashed populace to earn their keep.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“a swirl of smoke trapped in a glass bottle, an odd unlabelled thing unknowingly put up for sale.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories