The Fifth Season Quotes

“For all those that have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them they must earn the respect which everyone else receives by default. Tell them there is a standard for acceptance; that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at those contradictions, and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt. Then they'll break themselves trying for what they'll never achieve”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine. But this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. For the last time.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one's being. I am me, and you.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“We aren't human."

"Yes. We. Are." His voice turns fierce. "I don't give a shit what the something-somethingth council of big important farts decreed, or how the geomests classify things, or any of that. That we're not human is just the lie they tell themselves so they don't have to feel bad about how they treat us.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Who misses what they have never, ever even imagined?”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“There is an art to smiling in a way that others will believe. It is always important to include the eyes; otherwise, people will know you hate them.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“neither myths nor mysteries can hold a candle to the most infinitesimal spark of hope.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“It’s a gift if it makes us better. It’s a curse if we let it destroy us.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall; Death is the fifth and master of all.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say “the world has ended,” it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine. But this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. For the last time.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Nothing to do but follow your crazy,”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“But human beings, too, are ephemeral things in the planetary scale. The number of things that they do not notice are literally astronomical.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“When the reasoning mind is forced to confront the impossible again and again, it has no choice but to adapt.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“There passes a time of happiness in your life, which I will not describe to you. It is unimportant. Perhaps you think it wrong that I dwell so much on the horrors, the pain, but pain is what shapes us, after all. We are creatures born of heat and pressure and grinding, ceaseless movement. To be still is to be… not alive. But”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“I will tear the whole world apart if they ever hurt us again.'' But we would still be hurt, she thinks.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“There passes a time of happiness in your life, which I will not describe to you. It is unimportant. Perhaps you think it wrong that I dwell so much on the horrors, the pain, but pain is what shapes us, after all. We are creatures born of heat and pressure and grinding, ceaseless movement. To be still is to be… not alive.

But what is important is that you know it was not all terrible. There was peace in long stretches, between each crisis. A chance to cool and solidify before the grind resumed.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“You must remember, though, that most normal people have never seen an orogene, let alone had to do business with one, and—” She spreads her hands. “Isn’t it understandable that we might be… uncomfortable?” “Discomfort is understandable. It’s the rudeness that isn’t.” Rust this. This woman doesn’t deserve the effort of her explanation. Syen decides to save that for someone who matters. “And that’s a really shitty apology. ‘I’m sorry you’re so abnormal that I can’t manage to treat you like a human being.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“The body fades. A leader who would last relies on more.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Frightened people look for scapegoats.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“According to legend, Father Earth did not originally hate life. In fact, as the lorists tell it, once upon a time Earth did everything he could to facilitate the strange emergence of life on his surface. He crafted even, predictable seasons; kept changes of wind and wave and temperature slow enough that every living being could adapt, evolve; summoned waters that purified themselves, skies that always cleared after a storm. He did not create life—that was happenstance—but he was pleased and fascinated by it, and proud to nurture such strange wild beauty upon his surface. Then people began to do horrible things to Father Earth. They poisoned waters beyond even his ability to cleanse, and killed much of the other life that lived on his surface. They drilled through the crust of his skin, past the blood of his mantle, to get at the sweet marrow of his bones. And at the height of human hubris and might, it was the orogenes who did something that even Earth could not forgive: They destroyed his only child.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“think you hate me because… I’m someone you can hate. I’m here, I’m handy. But what you really hate is the world.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Fear of a bully, fear of a volcano; the power within you does not distinguish. It does not recognize degree.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“with the sort of patience one reserves for people who are being particularly stupid but don’t deserve to be told that to their faces because they’ve had a hard day.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Father Earth thinks in ages, but he never, ever sleeps. Nor does he forget.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“The look on her face is one of horror, or perhaps sorrow so great that it might as well be horror. Past a certain point, it’s all the same thing.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season