13 Quotes & Sayings By Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson is a novelist and short story writer from Toronto, Canada. She's the author of the bestselling Brown Girl in the Ring trilogy, a series of novels that blend fantasy and science fiction with Caribbean mythology. Her award-winning short fiction has been published in 30 anthologies, including The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Year's Best Science Fiction, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. In 2009, her work was nominated for a Hugo Award, and she won a 2009 Menton Literature Festival fiction prize for her novel Brown Girl in the Ring.

The heaviness of loss in her heart hadn't eased, but...
1
The heaviness of loss in her heart hadn't eased, but there was room there for humour, too. Nalo Hopkinson
2
They are me, these women. They are the ones who taught me to see; I taught me to see. They, we, are the ones healing the Ginen story, fighting to destroy that cancerous trade in shiploads of African bodies that ever demands to be fed more sugar, more rum, more Nubian gold. Nalo Hopkinson
3
We are all here, all the powers of the Ginen lives for all the centuries that they have been in existence, and we all fight. We change when change is needed. We are a little different in each place that the Ginen have come to rest, and any one of is already many powers. No cancer can fell us all, no blight cover us completely. Nalo Hopkinson
4
It’s so the stories go that the Ginen tell. If you find a beautiful fairmaid swimming in the river, her fish tail flashing; if you follow her down into her water home with her, she will make the water like air so you can breathe. But then she’ll ask you, playful, You eat salt, or you eat fresh? And if you say salt, she will let you go back home, but if you say fresh …“It’s my business, ” he said. Pouted. Looked at the ground. 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. . Nalo Hopkinson
5
When your elders are millennia-old demigods, you’d best take the injunction to respect your elders seriously. Nalo Hopkinson
6
Mid-range, androgynous voice. I first thought that Solaris was a guy. Then a girl. Maybe. Then I gave up trying to figure out which. It would become obvious at some point, or not. Nalo Hopkinson
7
So there’s a freeing up that happens when I can go into that storytelling mode... It isn’t about how much sense you make, it is about how compelling you are. (interview) Nalo Hopkinson
8
Beauty and ingenuity beat perfection hands down, every time. Nalo Hopkinson
9
Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back... The only thing soft about Tan-Tan is she big molasses-brown eyes that could look on you, and your heart would beat time... Nalo Hopkinson
10
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. Nalo Hopkinson
11
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. Nalo Hopkinson
12
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. Nalo Hopkinson