Quotes by China Miville, Embassytown

10 quotes found

Popular Quotes

“Sometimes translation stops you understanding.”

“You'd love a bit of pomp: that way in later years you might invoke end-of-empire ghosts.”

“I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice...”

“Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.”

“I needed to be alone for whatever would happen. I knew that something would as certainly as if this were a last chapter.”

“A promise fulfilled may be a classic moment, but prophecies mean anticlimax. How much more awesome was an unexpected salvation?”

Common Themes

youth language childhood memory experience human-nature wisdom cities embassytown lies-that-speak-truth metaphors similes speech alone avice-benner-cho last-chapter cowardice injunctions regret language-understanding science-fiction gossip secrets stories aging anticlimax promises prophecies salvation prose

“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.”
— China Miville, Embassytown
childhood memory youth

“Sometimes translation stops you understanding.”
— China Miville, Embassytown
experience human-nature wisdom

“We speak now or I do, and others do. You've never spoken before. You will. You'll be able to say how the city is a pit and a hill and a standard and an animal that hunts and a vessel on the sea and...”
— China Miville, Embassytown
cities embassytown language lies-that-speak-truth

“I needed to be alone for whatever would happen. I knew that something would as certainly as if this were a last chapter.”
— China Miville, Embassytown
alone avice-benner-cho last-chapter

“I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice...”
— China Miville, Embassytown
cowardice injunctions regret

“If I program ware with an Anglo-Ubiq word and play it, you understand it, Scile said. If I do the same with a word in Language, and play it to an Ariekes, I understand it, but to them it means noth...”
— China Miville, Embassytown
language language-understanding science-fiction

“Word spread because word will spread. Stories and secrets fight, stories win, shed new secrets, which new stories fight, and on.”
— China Miville, Embassytown
gossip secrets stories

“Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.”
— China Miville, Embassytown
aging youth

“A promise fulfilled may be a classic moment, but prophecies mean anticlimax. How much more awesome was an unexpected salvation?”
— China Miville, Embassytown
anticlimax promises prophecies salvation

“You'd love a bit of pomp: that way in later years you might invoke end-of-empire ghosts.”
— China Miville, Embassytown
prose