Shay > Shay's Quotes

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Olo, Remi, Kwuga, Nur, Anajama, Rhoden. Only Olo and Remi were in my group. Everyone else I met in the dining area or the learning room where various lectures were held by professors onboard the ship. They were all girls who grew up in sprawling houses, who’d never walked through the desert, who’d never stepped on a snake in the dry grass. They were girls who could not stand the rays of Earth’s sun unless it was shining through a tinted window.

Yet they were girls who knew what I meant when I spoke of “treeing.” We sat in my room (because, having so few travel items, mine was the emptiest) and challenged each other to look out at the stars and imagine the most complex equation and then split it in half and then in half again and again. When you do math fractals long enough, you kick yourself into treeing just enough to get lost in the shallows of the mathematical sea. None of us would have made it into the university if we couldn’t tree, but it’s not easy. We were the best and we pushed each other to get closer to “God.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Binti

“And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow do a disservice to my own reality by paying so much attention to the power fantasies of disenchanted white men?

But. Epic fantasy is not merely what Tolkien made it.

This genre is rooted in the epic — and the truth is that there are plenty of epics out there which feature people like me. Sundiata’s badass mother. Dihya, warrior queen of the Amazighs. The Rain Queens. The Mino Warriors. Hatshepsut’s reign. Everything Harriet Tubman ever did. And more, so much more, just within the African components of my heritage. I haven’t even begun to explore the non-African stuff. So given all these myths, all these examinations of the possible… how can I not imagine more? How can I not envision an epic set somewhere other than medieval England, about someone other than an awkward white boy? How can I not use every building-block of my history and heritage and imagination when I make shit up?

And how dare I disrespect that history, profane all my ancestors’ suffering and struggles, by giving up the freedom to imagine that they’ve won for me.”
― N.K. Jemisin

“She had bribed a teacher. She had stolen opium. She had burned herself, lied to her foster parents, abandoned her responsibilities at the store, and broken a marriage deal.
And she was going to Sinegard.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“I'm going to go pee. If the universe is bigger and stranger than I can imagine, it's best to meet it with an empty bladder.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“It is human nature, to give in hope of getting.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“Non sempre chi accondiscende è debole.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“How am I supposed to like myself if all these shitty things keep happening because I do them???”
― Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

“Thwarted by technobabble.”
― Scott Hawkins, The Library at Mount Char

“You're really extra fuckin special under arrest”
― Scott Hawkins, The Library at Mount Char

“The trouble with discovery is that it goes two ways. For you to find something, that thing must also find you.”
― Mira Grant, Into the Drowning Deep

“She was a surface creature where surface creatures had no business being, and it delighted her.”
― Mira Grant, Into the Drowning Deep

“Fortunately, where reason failed, blind panic served well enough.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“If you wish, gentle reader, you may augment your mental tableau with dramatic orchestral accompaniment.”
― Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons

“The dragon within my heart stirred, shifting her wings, as if remembering they could be used to fly.”
― Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons

“A husband willing to fund a library for his bookish wife is not so easy to obtain; most would see it as a pointless expense. You might, however, find one willing to share his library.”
― Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons

“Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels at Renwick’s.”
― Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons

“I find that respectability grows wearisome after a time, when one is accustomed to being a disgrace.”
― Marie Brennan, The Voyage of the Basilisk