Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the lovely Bionic Bookworm.

This prompt was a struggle for me! I can never remember quotes even if I thought them super profound at the time.  So, basically, I went through some of my favorite books looking for quotes…which is to say that these are not especially comprehensive. They don’t cover the range of every single quote I’ve appreciated because I simply cannot remember and I certainly did not go through all my books on Goodreads. Alas.

Unsurprisingly, N.K. Jemisin features quite a bit.  Also, there’s actually 6-8 quotes here because that’s just how I roll (it was really hard to pick okay).  Oddly enough, a lot of these seem to tie in with the current political situation in some way or another. That was not planned.

 

“Do not lose that hunger. You will always have to fight for everything. Even when you already have it, you will have to keep fighting to maintain it. You will have to be more ruthless, more brutal, more everything. Any weakness will undo everything you have accomplished. They will see any crack as evidence that they were right that a woman cannot do what you do.”

— Kiersten White, Now I Rise

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“There was no peace in continuing to do what had already proven unworkable. Sometimes tradition itself disrupted peace, and only newness could smooth the way.”

— N.K. Jemisin, The Shadowed Sun

 

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“But if you stay, no part of this comm[unity] gets to decide that any part of this comm[unity] is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people.”

“Everyone shouldn’t have a say in whose life is worth fighting for.”

— N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate

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“In a child’s eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.”

— N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

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“Freedom granted by your rulers is just a chain with a little slack.”

— Seth Dickinson, The Traitor Baru Cormorant

 

 

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“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”

— Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

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“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