Embassytown Quotes

“We speak now or I do, and others do. You've never spoken before. You will. You'll be able to say how the city is a pit and a hill and a standard and an animal that hunts and a vessel on the sea and the sea and how we are fish in it, not like the man who swims weekly with fish but the fish with which he swims, the water, the pool. I love you, you light me, warm me, you are suns.
You have never spoken before.”
― China Miéville, Embassytown

“A classic unspoken agreement among escapees from a small town: don't look back, don't be each other's anchors, no nostalgia.”
― China Miéville, Embassytown

“The city’s a heart, I said, and in that a heart and a city were sutured into a third thing, a heartish city, and cities are heart-stained, and hearts are city-stained too.”
― China Miéville

“The Ambassadors spoke to me in the language of our Hosts. They spoke me: they said me. They warned me that the literal translation of the simile would be inadequate and misleading. *There was a human girl who in pain ate what was given her in an old room built for eating in which eating had not happened for a time.* 'It'll be shortened with use,' Bren told me. 'Soon they'll be saying you're a girl ate what was given her.”
― China Miéville