Quotes from work
Embassytown

China Miéville

Embassytown is a science fiction novel by British author China Miéville. It was published in the UK by Pan Macmillan on 6 May 2011, and in the US by Del Rey Books on 17 May 2011. A limited edition was released by Subterranean Press. The plot of the novel surrounds the town of Embassytown, the native alien residents known as Ariekei, their Language, and the human interaction with them. The novel was well reviewed and won the 2012 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

“Word spread because word will spread. Stories and secrets fight, stories win, shed new secrets, which new stories fight, and on.”

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown

“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 Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter "Formerly, 2"

“Before the humans came, we didn't speak so much of certain things. Before the humans came, we didn't speak so much. Before the humans came, we didn't speak.”

China Miéville Embassytown

p 148-149
Embassytown (2011)

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

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter 27 (p. 312)

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

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter 24 (p. 296)

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

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter 22 (p. 276)

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

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter 18 (p. 239)

“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.”

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter 18 (p. 238)

“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.”

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter 15 (p. 213)

“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.”

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter 10 (p. 172)

“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.”

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter “Formerly, 1” (p. 53)

“A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.”

China Miéville Embassytown

Source: “And there aren’t any.”
“Mmm,” I said. “Awkward.”
“That’s defeatist talk. I’ll cobble something together. A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.”
Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter 0.3 (p. 37)