Quotes from Nalo Hopkinson

I'm a novelist, editor, short story writer. I also teach, and I freelance sometimes as an arts consultant. Most of my books have been published by Warner Books, now known as Grand Central Books.

You look at science fiction and look how often it talks about being alien, being alienated about the other. Look at the number of blue people - 'Avatar,' I'm looking at you. And it is now easier to find people of color in science-fiction literature and media, but the issues of representation are still really, really troubling.

I am Amaxon Corazon Junia Principia Delgado the Third, and I bent over my meal and wept luxurious tears into my green banana porridge. It was a perfect decoction, and it now would not satisfy me.

It's the thing I struggle with every day: the mental diligence and stamina needed to sit in front of the computer, open the file, start writing and to keep doing so, word after word, until I've created the next story. A combination of learning disability and chronic health issues make that the hardest thing for me.

I figure this current era of history is the one with the best chance of quality of life for a black, female, disabled, middle-aged, queer person who's most comfortable not fitting in. The odds still aren't great, mind you. But I'll take my chances with the 21st century.

I've learned now to have a second title in reserve because, frequently, I come up with titles that seem to make editors' hair fall out.

I love science fiction. There are ways in which this community kept me and my partner alive through some very, very bad years, and I will always acknowledge that.

I'm constantly coming up with new strategies for getting to the mental place where writing is so joyous and playful that I almost can't help putting the words down.

How you mean, 'doughnut hole'?" Ti-Jeanne had asked. "That's what they call it when an inner city collapses and people run to the suburbs," he'd answered.

Left Foot, Right In

How can ya think 'bout economics feelin' like . . . this?" "Not many people can," Ron said. "That's the Lll's protection.

So much history behind and between people, one moment was always a nasty echo of another time, most of who you were already scripted.

Emily Breakfast Dedicated

You never know what Legbara going to take it into he head to do. Him is a trickster. The Eshu-them too love to play games.

we have ripe banana dipped in sweet batter and fried, and green banana to boot. Cookie does fry them up nice-nice in olive oil, sprinkle them with a little coarse salt and some cayenne, then drench them in so much butter

People talk but do nothing," the Ginen people said. "Papa God doesn't talk, but he does plenty.

I'm happy to be here," he thought to himself as he shined an old woman's mirror, "and I know this is better than the Great Swamp of Ink, but it isn't what I expected at all.

The sea in the minds of my Ginen. The sea roads, the salt roads. And the sweet ones, too; the rivers. Can't follow them to their sources any more. I land up in the same foul, stagnant swamp every time. You must fix it, Mer.

The stairs were steel-reinforced slabs of concrete, worn down by years of foot traffic, each step canted a slightly different angle from its neighbours. I like that. I liked things that had been solidly made and that wore the evidence of hard use, of survival.

Panopte's Eye Tamai Kobayashi

Sex is powerful and beautiful and dangerous.

A Young Candy Daughter I'm

If you only eat unsalted food, fresh food, we believe you make Lasirèn vexed, for salt is the creatures of the sea, and good for the Ginen to eat, but fresh—fresh is the flesh of Lasirèn, and if you eat that, it's pride. You're trying to make yourself as one of the lwas. Makandal never eats salt. He, a living man, giving himself powers like a lwa. That's why he couldn't hear the voice of the lwas.

A Raggy Dog, a Shaggy Dog In