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China Miéville Quotes

born 1972 England

China Miéville (born 6 September 1972) is a Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke and Locus award-winning English fantastic fiction writer.

England
Academics
Essayists
Novelists
Science fiction authors

Also known as: China Mieville, Perdido Street Station

Random China Miéville quote

96 quotes

The reason that I like SF and fantasy and horror is that to me it's the pulp wing of surrealism.

Ori supposed there were as many unspeakable stories as there were men come back from war.

Iron Council (2004)

The chief was a thuggish man: nervous, Cutter saw, because he knew he was a mediocrity become by kink of history a ruler.

Iron Council (2004)

It’s the first principle, isn’t it? Whoever’s arguing fiercest for violence is the cop.

Looking for Jake (2005)

We say: votes for all and vote for change!

Perdido Street Station (2000)

A classic unspoken agreement among escapees from a small town: don’t look back, don’t be each other’s anchors, no nostalgia. I wasn’t expecting any of them to return.

Embassytown (2011)

The tricky bit with this technique was not getting the summons to work: it was to not summon too much.

Kraken: An Anatomy (2010)

Their minds were sudden merchants: metaphor, like money, equalised the incommensurable.

Embassytown (2011)

Koning’s skills were adequate, her calculations plausible enough, that the plans were hubristic but not quite mad.

Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

Abomination from one perspective, it was advertising copy from another.

Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

The lamp was a beacon, a lighthouse in that forbidding city, steering the wyrman’s way over the river and out of the predatory night.

Perdido Street Station (2000)

This was not the time for rage but for politics and strategy.

Looking for Jake (2005)

An abstract individual is a garuda who forgot, for some time, that he or she is part of a larger unit, and owes respect to all the other choosing individuals.

Perdido Street Station (2000)

Why wouldn’t the gods of the world be giant squid? What better beast? It wouldn’t take much to imagine those tentacles closing around the world, now would it?

Kraken: An Anatomy (2010)

He tried to grin but it did not go well.

The City & the City (2009)

It’s about the positing of something impossible—whether not-yet-possible or never-possible—and then taking that impossibility and granting it its own terms and systematicity.

She was intelligent enough to realize that her excitement was childish, but not mature enough to care.

Perdido Street Station (2000)

You were sick of sentimentality, of the moralism, maneuvering, and malice that comes with it.

Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

You make what you see into a window, and you see what you want through it. You make what you see a sort of a door.

Looking for Jake (2005)

This was the remnant of honour, nostalgic for spurious legendary times.

Kraken: An Anatomy (2010)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: China Miéville (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.