Naomi Novik

But the world I wanted wasn't the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.

Naomi Novik is an American writer of speculative fiction, including the Temeraire series (2006–2016), an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars involving dragons. She was a co-founder in 2007 of Archive of Our Own (AO3) an online archive of fan fiction.

Quotes

• Uprooted is very much about my mother’s side of the family, who were Polish Catholics. They were deeply patriotic and deeply rooted in their country...Spinning Silver is about my father’s family, and they were Lithuanian Jews who had to escape persecution—not just from the Nazis, but from their own neighbors.
  • In "Naomi Novik Talks Spinning Silver, Her Rumpelstiltskin-Inspired Novel" Paste Magazine, July 10, 2018

• Young women aren’t allowed to be selfishly angry. They’re sometimes allowed to be angry in a sort of righteous way for other people, but they are often discouraged from being like, “This is unfair to me. I’m mad for me, and I want these things for me.” I think it’s really important for women to fight against the idea that they’re not allowed to want things for themselves.
  • In "Naomi Novik Talks Spinning Silver, Her Rumpelstiltskin-Inspired Novel" Paste Magazine, July 10, 2018

• I think that a lot of anti-Semitism is historically a deflection of resentment of capital. It’s a deflection of that by the elite onto Jews, who are a convenient population to target. And this was something that happened in Western Europe and Eastern Europe, where the Jewish community became a piggy bank for rulers. These rulers deflected hostility from people who felt themselves being exploited but didn’t understand the system of exploitation.
  • In "Naomi Novik Talks Spinning Silver, Her Rumpelstiltskin-Inspired Novel" Paste Magazine, July 10, 2018

Temeraire series (2006–2016)

• I should rather have you than a heap of gold, even if it were very comfortable to sleep on.

Uprooted (2015)

They all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers...It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse. I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them-- this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn't a whole man.

• And I wasn’t old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon.

• I’m not stupid, nor a liar,” I said, “and if I can’t do any good, I can at least do something

• They all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers. They weren't alone in the world, mattering to no one but themselves. It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse. I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them-- this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn't a whole man.

Spinning Silver (2018)

• Thrice, mortal maiden,” in a rhyme almost like a song, “Thrice you shall turn silver to gold for me, or be changed to ice yourself.

• A power claimed and challenged and thrice carried out is true

• A robber who steals a knife and cuts himself cannot cry out against the woman who kept it sharp.

• I am not your subject or your servant, and if you want a cowering mouse for a wife, go find someone else who can turn silver to gold for you.

• The only thing that had ever done me any good in my father’s house was thinking: no one had cared what I wanted, or whether I was happy. I’d had to find my own way to anything I wanted. I’d never been grateful for that before now, when what I wanted was my life.

• But the world I wanted wasn't the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.

• But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.

• She was safe for another moment, one more moment, and all of life was only moments, after all.

• Of course I was afraid. But I had learned to fear other things more: being despised, whittled down one small piece of myself at a time, smirked at and taken advantage of. I put my chin up and said, as cold as I could be in answer, “And what will you give me in return?

• A crowd of women around me doing the ocean of women’s work that never subsided and never changed and always swallowed whatever time you gave it and wanted more, another hungry body of water. I submerged into it like a ritual bath and let it close over my head gladly.

Scholomance fantasy series (2020–2022)

• I love having existential crises at bedtime, it's so restful.

• You feel like it's going to rain.

• I'd want to. If you want, I want.

• But hope is good strong drink, especially when you can get someone else to buy it for you.

• “There’s no such thing as normal people, I said, a desperate flailing. “There’s just people, and some of them are miserable, and some of them are happy, and you’ve the same right to be happy as any of them—no more and no less.

• “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling stupid in the way I’m sorry always feels stupid when you mean it.

• We're all greedy, but children make it easier to be. We feel it's only right to give them everything we can grab, even when you know that anything you feed your own child still comes out of someone else's mouth.

• It was exactly what I wanted, only once I was in it, I didn’t want it after all.

• All of magic essentially involves sneaking something you want past reality while it’s distracted and looking the other way.

• By mundane standards, it was a cozy little place, the sort that a real estate listing would call charming, meaning not quite as large as you’d like.

• When you speak the future, you shape the future.