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The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2) QUOTES

The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2) QUOTES

1 " There is such a thing as too much loss. Too much has been taken from you both - taken and taken and taken, until there's nothing left but hope, and you've given that up because it hurts too much. Until you would rather die, or kill, or avoid attachments altogether, than lose one more thing. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

2 " Jija killed his own son for what a completely different person did, long before that son's birth. This, more than anything, helps her finally understand that there is no reasoning with her father's hatred. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

3 " All that stuff about Father Earth, it's just stories to explain what's wrong with the world. Like those weird cults that crop up from time to time. I heard of one that asks an old man in the sky to keep them alive every time they go to sleep. People need to believe there's more to the world than there is. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

4 " You have seen so much purposeless suffering that at least being killed for a reason can be borne? "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

5 " It is the lies he's telling her - as he has been, Nassun understands suddenly, her whole life - that really break her heart. He's said that he loves her, after all, but that obviously isn't true. He cannot love an orogene, and that is what she is. He cannot be an orogene's father, and that is why he constantly demands she be something other than what she is. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

6 " Everyone _shouldn't_ have a say in whose life is worth fighting for. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

7 " Urgency and despair don't get along well. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

8 " Being useful to others is not the same thing as being equal. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

9 " Love is no inoculation against murder. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

10 " Desperation makes for poor stealth. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

11 " (Schaffa saw her hand on the child's face, covering mouth and nose, pressing. Incomprehensible. Did she not know that Schaffa would love her son as he loved her? He would lay the boy down gently, so gently, in the wire chair.) "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

12 " No part of this comm gets to decide that any part of this comm is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people. [...] This is a community. You will be unified. You will fight for each other. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

13 " Complaining about nothing doesn't seem like coping to you, but okay. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

14 " Daddy," she says again, this time putting more of a needy whine into her voice. It is the thing that has swayed him, these times when he has come near to turning on her: remembering that she is his little girl. Reminding him that he has been, up to today, a good father.

It is a manipulation. Something of her is warped out of true by this moment, and from now on all her acts of affection toward her father will be calculated, performative. Her childhood dies, for all intents and purposes. But that is better than all of her dying, she knows. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

15 " [...] the kind of healer who knows that sometimes one must inflict terrible agony - rebreak a bone, carve off a limb, kill the weak - in order to make the whole stronger. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

16 " There are many of us now. Enough to be called a people in ourselves and not merely a mistake. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

17 " Denying what you are didn't keep people from knowing what you are."

"And flaunting it isn't what saved you."

Ykka takes a deep breath. The muscles in her jaw flex, relax. "And that would be why I asked you do this, Cutter. But let's move on."

So it goes on. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

18 " You've never really trusted him, though you don't understand why. Something about the fact that he's hidden all his life - which is hypocritical as hell after your ten years in Tirimo. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

19 " He’s never hurt you, though. The world has, but not him. Maybe the world deserved to be destroyed. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

20 " Given a choice between death and the barest possibility of acceptance, they were desperate, and we used that. We made them desperate. "

― N.K. Jemisin , The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)