Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Nalo Hopkinson
74 quotes
“Throughout the Caribbean, under different names, you'll find stories about people who aren't what they seem. Skin gives these skin folk their human shape. When the skin comes off, their true selves emerge. They may be owls. They may be vampiric balls of fire. And always, whatever the burden their skins bear, once they remove them once they get under their own skins-they can fly. It seemed an apt metaphor to use for these stories collectively.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in Skin Folk (2001)
“I was nodding off on the streetcar home from work when I saw the woman getting on. She was wearing the body I used to have! The shock woke me right up: It was my original, the body I had replaced two years before, same full, tarty-looking lips; same fat thighs, rubbing together with every step; same outsize ass; same narrow torso that seemed grafted onto a lower body a good three sizes bigger, as though God had glued leftover parts together.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: beginning of "A Habit of Waste", short story published in Fireweed Issue 53 (Spring 1996) and collected in Skin Folk (2001)
“I've learned I can trust that humans in general will strive to make things better for themselves and their communities. Not all of us. Not always in principled, loving, or respectful ways. Often the direst opposite, in fact. But we're all on the same spinning ball of dirt, trying to live as best we can.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: from the Forward to Falling in Love with Hominids (2015)
“Mami,” Ti-Jeanne said, “I should go and get Baby. He ain’t take to Tony.” “Hmph. Child got some sense, then. More than some I could name. But leave he there. He have to learn that he can’t always have what he want.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can’t keep giving my will into other people hands no more, ain’t? I have to decide what I want to do for myself.” No answer. It wasn’t going to tell her.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had a yearning to lose herself in this noisy throng of people going about the business of staying alive.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since Baby’s birth, she had learned that the first few months of motherhood were about fatigue and leakiness.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This was a thing she’d not seen before, how the meat that fed her was a living being one minute and then violently dead. The smell of it was personal, inescapable, like the scent that rose in the steam from her own self when she stepped into a hot bath. They had broken open the animal’s secret body just to eat it.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Come in peace to my home, Tan-Tan. And when you go, go in friendship.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She just wanted to be somewhere safe, somewhere familiar, where people looked and spoke like her and she could stand to eat the food.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She curled up on the pallet and stared into the dark, praying for a peaceful sleep. Prayers didn’t do no good, oui. Antonio chased her all night. (In the book Antonio, her father, beats and sexually abuses her long-term; she eventually kills him)”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She was hiding in the best possible way, masquerading as herself!”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just being Tan-Tan, sometimes good, sometimes bad, mostly just getting by like everybody else.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lasirèn, pray you a quick death for Hopping John. Pray you no more of this life for him. Even though no gods answer black people’s prayers here in this place.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All the people sick and dead on the ships, and the ones sick and dead on this soil. What are gods for, then, if they let things like this to happen to their people?”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Desire makes us all babies again.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is ugly in this world, and when the killing starts, the same stick will beat the black dog and the white.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t pay much mind to politricks. Never met a politician who wouldn’t try to convince you that salt was sugar.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was time to be honest with myself. To survive all the shame this world will throw at you, you have to hold yourself tall, look your accuser straight in the eye. Even if it’s your own face looking back at you.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Children were pack animals; let any one of them act different from the group, and the rest would bring him down.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Children,” I said to her. “For the first little while, they not exactly human, you don’t find?”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Suck all the juice this life will give! (p33)”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty and ingenuity beat perfection hands down, every time. (p179)”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“for me to exist in this world I have to have a radical agenda because the world has got to change in order for people like me to be able to exist...I need to have a radical agenda. I need to make a world where it is perfectly okay that I'm attracted to people who live inbetween genders. I think that should not be a problem. I can't change. The world has to change.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in What's a Black Critic to Do?: Interviews, Profiles and Reviews of Black Writers edited by Donna Bailey Nurse (2004)
“In the fantastical genres there is an idea that the world can change. And that to me is immensely hopeful.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The metaphors we use in the west come from Greek and European mythology. Aishu in West African religious mythology is the deity I use in Midnight Robber. Aishu said: "I would like to go everywhere and see everything." a perfect metaphor for artificial intelligence. Black people have a rich spiritual heritage, as well as a rich imaginative life-stories handed down over centuries-that inform our ideas of the future. They need to be on the table like everybody else's.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When people ask me to define science fiction and fantasy I say they are the literatures that explore the fact that we are toolmakers and users, and are always changing our environment.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Writers have to live in more than two worlds. The intellectual life of the Caribbean was available to me when I was growing up, through my parents, but being a science fiction and fantasy reader was strange. (There are still very few people in the Caribbean writing SF.) But I think being Caribbean, you're aware of being a multiplicity. Pretty much all of us who come from there are of mixed-race backgrounds, no matter what we look like. And they are really pluralist societies -- have been for centuries, though of course there are similar issues of systemic racism.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On how her racial background plays into the duality of a writer in “Nalo Hopkinson: Multiplicity” in LocusMag (June 2007)
“Every so often I come up with a different definition of what science fiction and fantasy do, and I'm always looking for one that describes what they both do, rather than separating them. Currently I'm saying that one of the things they do is look at the effects of large-scale social change on both populations and individuals. Fantasy tends to look to the past, and science fiction to the future, but what is common to many of the stories is change: huge societal upheaval.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On her comparing of science fiction and fantasy in “Nalo Hopkinson: Multiplicity” in LocusMag (June 2007)
“…Even though we talk about race a lot in the literature, there’s still this idea of “Well, if we make this person blue and give them pointy ears, then we don’t have to actually talk about what’s happening in the real world.” And those of us who live in racialized bodies feel that lack, we feel that erasure, so yes, there was something quite deliberate in my doing half the speech as an alien.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On race still being a taboo topic in the world of science fiction in “Interview: Nalo Hopkinson” in Lightspeed (June 2013)
“…There’s still this notion that you are somehow morally superior if you don’t know anything about the background of the writers you read, and I maintain that writers have every right to not talk their backgrounds, that’s fine, but when people do and it’s important to their work, to not know doesn’t mean you’re morally superior, it means you are indifferent…”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the author having the right to reveal anything personal that’s significant to them in “Interview: Nalo Hopkinson” in Lightspeed (June 2013)
“It’s the beautiful thing about being a fiction writer; you can write the world you want to see.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in The Queer Caribbean Speaks edited by Kofi Omoniyi Sylvanus Campbell (2014)
“They say that writing is a solitary sport, but it isn’t, really. It doesn’t have to be. Some people are really happy about writing alone, but some people actually suffer from the isolation. (2024)”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I enjoy exploring my connection to Caribbean vernacular – or, any vernacular. I love how people actually speak. There is an art and a poetry and a beauty and a logic to it that, to me, is undeniable. There’s no such thing as bad language, in my mind. (2024)”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ve learned, don’t fight too hard when readers say, ‘You got this wrong.’ There’s a very good chance you got it wrong. I’ve started to think of it as them being helpful – that’s what’s best for my psyche. (2024)”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know how reality goes. I’m already caught up in an interesting life. I don’t need to write about it...I prefer fantasy and science fiction. They’re genres that actively say that change is possible.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Labels are very important to me. They’re a way of finding community and a way of community finding you. If people are looking for my work because they’re looking for the work of another woman or the work of a science fiction writer or a black writer, it helps if they know that I am that. For me, identity is kind of a mailbox.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We live in a racist world, and there’s no less racism [in the science fiction community] than anywhere else. But the nice thing about the science fiction community is that it’s very accepting of a challenge, of something new. We’re all a community of eggheads. We like knowing stuff. For the most part, [sci-fi readers] open the book and...get very interested in the language and the world and culture I’m talking about.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reading people like James Baldwin [made me realise] that, if you’re an artist, there’s no reason not to make art out of anything. Sex is a big part of the human experience. It’s something that we’re hardwired to think about. Why would you avoid making art about something that is so all-encompassingly important to human beings?”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think inserting yourself into a place where you are told you don't belong, when you know quite well you do, is important work. (2017)”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is so much vibrant work coming out, and more and more of it beginning to come out from, and depicting, a broader range of humanity. (2017)”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“why have things shifted a little? I think that at root it's the vocal, persistent activism of the ones most affected; the people who need positive change. (2021)”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“there are aspects of it [teaching] that are not at all enjoyable. But that "lively exchange of ideas" thing? That satisfaction you feel when a student's world expands a bit? Those are real. (2021)”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(IL: So why do you think the SF community is more willing to discuss gay/lesbian issues versus race issues?) NH: Yeah, why do I think that is? Because queerness is still seen as a white issue, to the irritation to those of us who are both of color and queer.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[about writing science fiction with an African sensibility] You have to reinvent the language. You have to craft some bizarre amalgam of the sensibility you're trying to bring and a science fiction sensibility... you're grafting two things together that did not grow together, and it's difficult to do that successfully.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd like to see support right through the various forms, the various artistic disciplines for artists of color who are interested in futuristic and fantastical visions. I'd like to see us really start to make them welcome because they bring a different vision. We bring a different vision and that will change the genre, and the genre is about change.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“to be color-blind in a racist world is to not be an ally...if the playing field isn't level, and you're not doing anything to make it level, you aren't actually being fair.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think what happens is as with any form of oppression the people most concerned with or think about it the most deeply are the people most negatively affected by it.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science fiction and fantasy are about looking at the world through a different lens. So whatever I write, including sex scenes, I may first think, how can I cause myself, and the reader, to see this differently? What can I do to challenge, delight, surprise, unsettle?”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science fiction is and has been ripe to discuss other possibilities for sex and relationships: multiple marriages, communal structures, different genders. Writers like Theodore Sturgeon, Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, Elizabeth Lynn, Nicola Griffith, Elisabeth Vonarburg, Candas Jane Dorsey, Eleanor Arnason, Storm Constantine have been my touchstones.”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source