Kameron Hurley Quotes

The love of one's life was never that which you wished for or hoped for or forgot or lost or mistook; it was the partner you spent your long days with ... ~ Kameron Hurley

When you understand what the world is, you have two choices: Become a part of that world and perpetuate that system forever and ever, unto the next generation. Or fight it, and break it, and build something new. The former is safer, and easier. The latter is scarier, because who is to say what you build will be any better? ~ Kameron Hurley

I don't know what God wants, Eshe."
"The mullahs say they know what God wants," Eshe said. "You believe them?" He met her look in the rearview mirror.
Nyx looked back at the road. "The mullahs can't figure out what they want for dinner," she said. ~ Kameron Hurley

We must rewrite our story from one of fear to one of celebration. ~ Kameron Hurley

Asking men to cut away their "feminine" traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to suppress their "masculine" traits asks them to deny their full autonomy.
What makes us human is not one or the other - the fist or the open palm - it's our ability to embrace both, and choose the appropriate action for the situation we're in. Because to deny one half - to burn down the world or refuse to defend the world from those who would burn it - is to deny our humanity and become something less than human. ~ Kameron Hurley

And there is good money to be made when things are bad. ~ Kameron Hurley

The motto above the lintel of the main entrance was in the raised script of the prayer language: My life for a thousand.

She remembered swearing an oath with that at its core: My life for yours, for ours, for Nasheen. My life for a thousand. ~ Kameron Hurley

Nobody knows anybody. We're all working on blind faith. ~ Kameron Hurley

Language is a powerful thing, and it changes the way we view ourselves, and other people, in delightful and horrifying ways. Anyone with any knowledge of the military, or who pays attention to how the media talks about war, has likely caught on to this.
We don't kill "people." We kill "targets." (Or japs or gooks or ragheads). We don't kill "fifteen year old boys" but "enemy combatants" (yes, every boy 15 and over killed in drone strikes now is automatically listed as an enemy combatant. Not a boy. Not a child.). ~ Kameron Hurley

If it wasn't the Tai Mora, who would we fight? Ourselves? The Dhai? The Dorinah? Always another face, always the same face. ~ Kameron Hurley

Nyx had finished off a fifth of vodka for breakfast, since she'd sworn off whiskey. ~ Kameron Hurley

The wonderful thing about being ignorant is that it can be resolved very easily. Foolishness cannot. ~ Kameron Hurley

That meant the only reliable way was ... through. ~ Kameron Hurley

We can pretend all we like that women are equal, ut as long as men and women are continually encouraged to supress the broad aspects of their humanity that we decry as "feminine", we're all screwed.
Because it's those things qe celebrate as "other" that make us truly human. It's what we label "soft" or "feminune" that makes civilization possible, It's our empathy, our ability to care and nurtureand connect. It's our ability to come together. To buld. To remake. Asking men to cut away their "feminine" traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to supress ther "masculine" traits asks them to deny their full autonomy. ~ Kameron Hurley

What does it matter, if we tell the same old stories? ... Stories tell us who we are. What we're capable of. When we go out looking for stories we are, I think, in many ways going in search of ourselves, trying to find understanding of our lives, and the people around us. Stories, and language tell us what's important. ~ Kameron Hurley

You going to fuck her or kill her?" Anneke asked when Nyx sent Mercia off with her bodyguards. "You never look that close unless it's one or the other. ~ Kameron Hurley

She is equal parts manic brutality and strategic fuckery. ~ Kameron Hurley

Nobody really knows what I am," Nyx said. "Not until I put a bullet in their head. ~ Kameron Hurley

The cunt is not the heart, though a lot of people get the two confused. ~ Kameron Hurley

Your voice is powerful. Your voice has meaning. If it didn't, people wouldn't work so hard to silence you.
Remember that. ~ Kameron Hurley

Humanity is a monster you can never kill. ~ Kameron Hurley

What were all of them, really, but bits of something else? Bits of stars? ~ Kameron Hurley

She wanted to build a better world. So why did so many others want to keep it just the same? ~ Kameron Hurley

What folks don't realize, I think, is that very often "good" just means "competent." I ~ Kameron Hurley

We kill a few people to stop a lot of people dying," Nyx said. "Wars kill a lot of people to keep a few people rich. ~ Kameron Hurley

Men did not like women to weep. It reminded them of their own failings. ~ Kameron Hurley

Because you may find yourself in a very bad position, Rohinmey," Dasai said. "If things go wrong, I do not want you to fight. I want you to live. ~ Kameron Hurley

Most people who watch a fight think it's all about the muscle: hitting harder, moving faster. And, yeah, sometimes it looked that way. But telling somebody that you won a fight by hitting the other person harder and more often was like telling somebody that the way you kept from drowning was by moving your arms and legs. ~ Kameron Hurley

independence is one of the greatest delusions of youth ~ Kameron Hurley

She had traded that first womb for twenty notes and a case of Ras Tiegan beer. ~ Kameron Hurley

He wore a white girdle that pulled in his waist just above the hips. He was, of necessity, slender. She believed men should take up as little space as possible. He wore his black hair long over his shoulders, tied once with a white ribbon. The men allowed to live were, of course, beautiful, far more beautiful than any of the women Zezili knew. Anavha was clean-shaven, as she wanted him, lightly powdered in gold, his eyes lined in kohl, eyes a stormy grey, set a bit too wide in a broad face whose jaw she has initially found almost vulgar in its squareness. He stood a hand shorter than she; she easily outweighed him by fifty pounds. She liked him just this way. ~ Kameron Hurley

There was a fine line between madness and intelligence. ~ Kameron Hurley

The most dangerous lie we tell ourselves is that writing novels shouldn't feel like a job. ~ Kameron Hurley

Light doesn't always keep the dark things away, Nyx said. ~ Kameron Hurley

Someone had to fight the monsters. Who better than a monster? ~ Kameron Hurley

I'm passionately interested in truth: truth is something that happens whether or not we see it, or believe it, or write about. Truth just is. ~ Kameron Hurley

But I find soldiering false, a broken way to manage people who should be bound to you in love, not fear. ~ Kameron Hurley

The secret to leadership is not to be a particularly intelligent person. It is to surround oneself with those far smarter than oneself. And try not to kill them. ~ Kameron Hurley

We finally got around to processing the Queen's request to reinstate your bel dame status," Fatima said.
"What, twelve years later?"
"Bel dames are not known for the efficiency of their paper pushing. ~ Kameron Hurley

This is the power and promise of science fiction, this magic of creating and living in every possible future. ~ Kameron Hurley

You're scaring the help," Rhys said. He watched her now with his dark eyes.
"I scare a lot of people," Nyx said. ~ Kameron Hurley

Because until you know what you want to be, other people are just going to keep trying to make you into something useful for them. ~ Kameron Hurley

Systems of racism and sexism and oppression are not systems we choose, but they are ones we inherit and are responsible for perpetuating, or not. When I hear so-and-so was "a product of his/her time" as an excuse for bigoted behavior, I remind folks that there have always been people in every time who did not agree with the bigoted systems they were born into and who actively fought them. The question is, which are we? ~ Kameron Hurley

When I sat down with one of my senior professors in Durban, South Africa to talk about my Master's thesis, he asked me why I wanted to write about women resistance fighters.

"Because women made up twenty percent of the ANC's militant wing!" I gushed. "Twenty percent! When I found that out I couldn't believe it. And you know – women have never been part of fighting forces –"
The Huntress

The Huntress, art by S. Ross Browne

He interrupted me. "Women have always fought," he said.

"What?" I said.

"Women have always fought," he said. "Shaka Zulu had an all-female force of fighters. Women have been part of every resistance movement. Women dressed as men and went to war, went to sea, and participated actively in combat for as long as there have been people. ~ Kameron Hurley

I'm not trying to be mean,' Casamir says.
'Intent doesn't always matter. ~ Kameron Hurley

The sand has rules. Fucked up rules, but rules nonetheless. ~ Kameron Hurley

Your haters are not here for a conversation. They are here to keep you from doing your work. ~ Kameron Hurley

And some of us believe in freedom of the individual over the tyranny of the common good. ~ Kameron Hurley

And next thing you know, six of my best apprentices get purged for minor paperwork discrepancies and perhaps an unreported cock or two. ~ Kameron Hurley

Life was what you did with what was done to you. ~ Kameron Hurley

But I am a great pretender, sometimes so good at it that I convince myself that what I pretend is what is truly real. ~ Kameron Hurley

There are some stories that don't want telling," Gian said. "Some stories you tell, they make things worse. Not better. ~ Kameron Hurley

All you have to decide, as they say, is what you do with the time given. ~ Kameron Hurley

Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert.
Drunk, but no longer bleeding, she pushed into a smoky cantina just after dark and ordered a pinch of morphine and a whiskey chaser. She bet all of her money on a boxer named Jaks, and lost it two rounds later when Jaks hit the floor like an antique harem girl. ~ Kameron Hurley

Perhaps every society is a utopia when you fail to peel up all the layers and look at what's underneath ~ Kameron Hurley

Good luck to you," he said, and she remembered how he had looked at her as she pinned Yah Tayyib, as if she was some kind of monster.

Maybe she was. ~ Kameron Hurley

War makes monsters of us all. But what happens to those of us who no longer wish to be monsters? ~ Kameron Hurley

People do not take actions based on logic. We make choices based on emotion. Every one of us. Then we use what we call logic to justify our choices. ~ Kameron Hurley

Storytelling instead of info dumping is a fairly well-known life hack, but there are still very few people who tell stories instead of facts. ~ Kameron Hurley

It all came apart once you started caring for something outside yourself. ~ Kameron Hurley

Her body sometimes amazed her. She could keep going long after she couldn't. ~ Kameron Hurley

That was a very formidable woman," Caisa said.
"I seem to know a good many of those."
"And you have a terrible habit of angering them," she said. ~ Kameron Hurley

Bel dames spent most of their time running after criminals in dingy, unfiltered cities, making enemies with other bel dames whose notes they stole, girlfriends they fucked, and sons they killed. ~ Kameron Hurley

Power is nothing without discipline. Power without discipline is short lived. ~ Kameron Hurley

I spent a great deal of my ilfe trying to be quiet and nice and not piss anyone off. I was misereable. It served no purpose. And they still came for me. It made me even easier to dismiss, to overlook, to assume I was just somebody else everybody could roll over and spout off ridiculously sexist, racist crap without dissent.
But nodding and smiling gets old. It makes it easier for people to box you up and ship you off, I'm only really alive when I'm pissing people off anyway ~ Kameron Hurley

Human beings are, if nothing else, dedicated to upholding their narrative of the way the world is supposed to be, whether or not that world ever truly existed. ~ Kameron Hurley

Ahmed turned, and leaned into him. Kissed him on the mouth again.
"I'm pretty fucked up," Eshe said.
"It's a good thing I'm perfect, then. ~ Kameron Hurley

Nyx was a lot of things, but forgettable wasn't one of them. ~ Kameron Hurley

We have one shot at this," Zezili said, "so don't fuck it up." Looking at the filthy, scar-faced girl next to her, Zezili suspected all the girl ever did was fuck up. ~ Kameron Hurley

Lilia did not believe in miracles outside of history books, but she was beginning to believe in her own power, and that was a more frightening thing to believe in. ~ Kameron Hurley

Bodies are only beautiful if they aren't yours. ~ Kameron Hurley

We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative ~ Kameron Hurley

I had no idea what to say to this. I had been nurtured in the U.S. school system on a steady diet of the Great Men theory of history. History was full of Great Men. I had to take separate Women's History courses just to learn about what women were doing while all the men were killing each other. It turned out many of them were governing countries and figuring out rather effective methods of birth control that had sweeping ramifications on the makeup of particular states, especially Greece and Rome.
Half the world is full of women, but it's rare to hear a narrative that doesn't speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man's daughter. A man's wife. ~ Kameron Hurley

What if they'd brought some weapon with them, or are launching an assault on the Mokshi right now? How can you or her trust people who are no better than bandits?" I gaze at the human skin stretched over the table. Zan follows my look and quiets. "We are all villains here," I say. ~ Kameron Hurley

The more women writers I read, from Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler to Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Toni Morrison, the less alone I felt, and the more I began to see myself as part of something more. It wasn't about one woman toiling against the universe. It was about all of us moving together, crying out into some black, inhospitable place that we would not be quiet, we would not go silently, we would not stop speaking, we would not give in. * ~ Kameron Hurley

You don't understand," Bakira called after the councilwoman. "There are no options for me. None. You have taken all of them. I know what we are here. You say Nasheen is ruled by God and Queen, but it is not. It is ruled by rich, blind, First Family women like you who wish to divide and conquer us. I see what you made us, and I reject it. We are not just the bloody afterbirth, the mess you leave behind as you claw your way to prominence. We are hum beings, as good as you. Better. I know we can build something better. ~ Kameron Hurley

Stories teach us empathy, and limiting the expression of humanity in our heroes entirely based on sex or gender does us all a disservice. It placess restrictions on what we consider human, which dehumanizes the people we see who do not express traits that fit our narow definition of what's acceptable. ~ Kameron Hurley

I'd internalized an astonishing amount of misogyny growing up that I didn't even recognize until my early twenties. ~ Kameron Hurley

There is something more than violence that Nasheenians taught me, and that is the awful brutality of speaking absolute truth. I propose that we begin to unmask ourselves. We speak the truth of ourselves. We tell them just how many of us there are. ~ Kameron Hurley

The war had remade her. Reshaped her purpose. Why couldn't she unmake it again? ~ Kameron Hurley

I love birds. I love to cage them, you see, because when you first do it, they fight so terribly hard. They are so alive, so defiant. I measure how long it takes for them to lose their spirit. To stop fighting. To resign themselves to their fate ... They all give up, eventually. They are all in a cage, you see. There is no way out. ~ Kameron Hurley

You started caring about somebody, you did stupid things. ~ Kameron Hurley

I have spent my life battling monsters. It was only in realizing that I was the monster, and choosing to destroy her, that I could save the world. ~ Kameron Hurley

So what the hell's wrong with me?" Nyx eased off the marble slab.
"Besides your deviant moral flexibility and severe phobia of emotional commitment?" Yahfia asked.
"I consider those virtues," Nyx said. ~ Kameron Hurley

Just keep in mind," Liaro said, "they're not going to remember the words. They'll remember how you made them feel. Make them feel something. ~ Kameron Hurley

She had no magical ability, so the face he gazed into carried no illusions. She'd never tried to be anything but what she was, for him or anyone else. She was thirty-two years old, and looked ten years older. Born on the coast, raised in the interior, burned at the front, a woman who was alive only because behind her was a long line of dead men. And women. ~ Kameron Hurley

It was strange how you didn't realise how much you loved a place until you had lost it completely. ~ Kameron Hurley

You will learn to love it. Or it will destroy you. Neither is unpleasant. ~ Kameron Hurley

So long as the people with the power - to hire and fire you, approve or deny your loan, or write up your speeding ticket - look at you through the lens of institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia or any other -sim they've learned form stories, videos, media and other biased individuals, a single win means nothing. We cannot effect true change alone. ~ Kameron Hurley

Women are just women." Mercia's forehead wrinkled. "Those women were bel dames. ~ Kameron Hurley

His militia escorted her up four painful flights of stairs to a great foyer, apologizing the whole way for not considering how difficult stairs would be for her. What they really meant, of course, was that they felt silly and impatient because her pace was so much slower than theirs. ~ Kameron Hurley

( ... ) then went into his room in the middle of the night after a long, heavy day of footwork and drinking; a coward's fight. She'd trussed him up and cut off his cock. She considered the act her formal resignation. ~ Kameron Hurley

When Lilia was four years old, her mother filled a shallow dish with Lilia's blood and fed it to the boars that patrolled the thorn fence. ~ Kameron Hurley

The women in my family were hardworking matriarchs. But the stories I saw on TV and movies and even in many books said they were anomalies ~ Kameron Hurley

Rumour has it you've turned castration into an occupation."
"You go cutting one guy's cock off and you never hear the end of it," Nyx said. ~ Kameron Hurley

Take me there. Or is this a kidnapping? Don't confuse rescue and kidnapping. I have not asked to be rescued. ~ Kameron Hurley

How are you feeling?"
"Fit as a harem girl."
"You're as much a harem girl as I am a mullah," Suha said. ~ Kameron Hurley

You need to change the whole system to be free, not just improve your part in it. ~ Kameron Hurley

Reality TV does actually have a message, folks. That message is selling and reinforcing capitalism, ignorance, and the status quo. ~ Kameron Hurley

The world is full of people who write poorly but passionately, and others who can put a sentence together but have no feeling behind it. All they have in common is that they don't give up when people say they're talentless hacks. And both of those types of writers have audiences. ~ Kameron Hurley