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Quotes from Embassytown — China Miéville

born 1972 England

← All quotes by China Miéville

10 quotes

What theology that would have been, a god self-worshipping, a drug addicted to itself.

Embassytown (2011)

“It’s beyond words,” indeed. “There’s no such thing.”

Embassytown (2011)

I suspect there was a power struggle in the Embassy, that some would have tried, out of habit, without rationale, to wall up information. They didn’t win.

Embassytown (2011)

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)

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

Embassytown (2011)

There wasn’t even any reasoning. Secrecy was just a bureaucrats’ reflex.

Embassytown (2011)

It wasn’t a city anymore, it was a collection of broken places separated by war without politics or acquisition so not war at all really but something more pathological.

Embassytown (2011)

It felt like being a child again, though it was not. Being a child is like nothing. It’s only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.

Embassytown (2011)

I suppose there were other institutions in Embassytown where the dynamic of the quotidian sustained—some hospitals, perhaps some schools, perhaps houses where shiftparents most deeply loved the children. Whenever any society dies there must be heroes whose fightback is to not change.

Embassytown (2011)

“I don’t want to be a simile anymore,” I said. “I want to be a metaphor.”

Embassytown (2011)

Attribution

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