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If you’ve spent any time in the publishing world or bookish communities, R. F. Kuang is probably a name you’ve heard a lot.
Her series went global – like Harry Potter-level global – and it felt like everyone was reading it.
I’ll admit, I’m usually hesitant to pick up super popular books.
They can sometimes feel a bit overhyped, you know? But this one? It was different.
I fell in love with The Poppy War Series, and now that I’ve started Babel, I can already tell you it’s just as amazing.
One thing I really admire about this aurhor is how much heart and effort she puts into her books.
They’re truly epic in every sense of the word.
I’m planning to share a review on the blog soon (I’ll link it here when it’s up!), but in the meantime, I’ve put together some of my favorite quotes from Babel so far.
If you haven’t picked up this book yet, please do yourself a favor and grab a copy – it’s just that good!
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Best Quotes from Babel by R.F. Kuang
1. “We have to die to get their pity. We have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion, a wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry. I don’t want to be their Imoinda, their Oroonoko. I don’t want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live.”
2. “That’s the beauty of learning a new language. It should feel like an enormous undertaking. It ought to intimidate you. It makes you appreciate the complexity of the ones you know already.”
3. “Nice comes from the Latin word for “stupid”,’ said Griffin. ‘We do not want to be nice.”
4. “After all, we’re here to make the unknown known, to make the other familiar. We’re here to make magic with words.”
5. “History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.”
6. “They were men at Oxford; they were not Oxford men. But the enormity of this knowledge was so devastating, such a vicious antithesis to the three golden days they’d blindly enjoyed, that neither of them could say it out loud.”
7. “Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
8. “The thing about violence, see, is that the Empire has a lot more to lose than we do. Violence disrupts the extractive economy. You wreak havoc on one supply line, and there’s a dip in prices across the Atlantic. Their entire system of trade is high-strung and vulnerable to shocks because they’ve made it thus, because the rapacious greed of capitalism is punishing. It’s why slave revolts succeed. They can’t fire on their own source of labour – it’d be like killing their own golden geese.”
9. “Power did not lie in the tip of a pen. Power did not work against its own interests. Power could only be brought to heel by acts of defiance it could not ignore. With brute, unflinching force. With violence.”
10. “Books are meant to be touched, otherwise they’re useless.”
11. “The word loss was inadequate. Loss just meant a lack, meant something was missing, but it did not encompass the totality of this severance, this terrifying un-anchoring from all that he’d ever known.”
12. “So, you see, translators do not so much deliver a message as they rewrite the original. And herein lies the difficulty – rewriting is still writing, and writing always reflects the author’s ideology and biases.”
13. “Grief suffocated. Grief paralysed. Grief was a cruel, heavy boot pressed so hard against his chest that he could not breathe.”
14. “English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.”
15. “Empire needed extraction. Violence shocked the system, because the system could not cannibalize itself and survive. The hands of the Empire were tied, because it could not raze that from which it profited.”
16. “That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
17. “Nice comes from the Latin word for ‘stupid,’ said Griffin. We do not want to be nice.”
18. “But that’s the great contradiction of colonialism.’ Cathy uttered this like a simple matter of fact. ‘It’s built to destroy that which it prizes most’.”
19. “History isn’t a pre-made tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.”
20. “He hated this place. He loved it. He resented how it treated him. He still wanted to be a part of it – because it felt so good to be a part of it, to speak to its professors as an intellectual equal, to be in on the great game.”
21. “That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
22. “A lie was not a lie if it was never uttered; questions that were never asked did not need answers. They would both remain perfectly content to linger in the liminal, endless space between truth and denial.”
23. “She learned revolution is, in fact, always unimaginable. It shatters the world you know. The future is unwritten, brimming with potential. The colonizers have no idea what is coming, and that makes them panic. It terrifies them.”
24. “Anger was a chokehold. Anger did not empower you. It sat on your chest; it squeezed your ribs until you felt trapped, suffocated, out of options. Anger simmered, then exploded. Anger was constriction, and the consequent rage a desperate attempt to breathe.”
25. “If we push in the right spots – then we’ve moved things to the breaking point. Then the future becomes fluid, and change is possible. History isn’t a pre-made tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.”
26. “But never forget the audacity of what you are attempting. Never forget that you are defying a curse laid by God.”
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27. “But that’s the great contradiction of colonialism. It’s built to destroy that which it prizes most.”
28. “There are no kind masters, Letty,’ Anthony continued. ‘It doesn’t matter how lenient, how gracious, how invested in your education they make out to be. Masters are masters in the end.”
29. “Words tell stories. Specifically, the history of those words – how they came into use, and how their meaning morphed into what they mean today – tell us just as much about a people, if not more, than any other kind of historical artifact.”
30. “I suppose we decided to be girls because being boys seems to require giving up half your brain cells.”
31. “No one’s focused on how we’re all connected. We only think about how we suffer, individually. The poor and middle-class of this country don’t realize they have more in common with us than they do with Westminster.”
32. “What you don’t understand,’ said Ramy, ‘is how much people like you will excuse if it just means they can get tea and coffee on their breakfast tables. They don’t care, Letty. They just don’t care.”
33. “In the years to come, Robin would return so many times to this night. He was forever astonished by its mysterious alchemy, by how easily two badly socialized, restrictively raised strangers had transformed into kindred spirits in a span of minutes.”
34. “The origins of the word ‘anger’ were tied closely to physical suffering. ‘Anger’ was first an ‘affliction’, as meant by the Old Icelandic angr, and then a ‘painful, cruel, narrow’ state, as meant by the Old English enge, which in term came from the Latin angor, which meant ‘strangling, anguish, distress’.”
35. “Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
36. “We’re here to make magic with words.”
37. “The word loss was inadequate. Loss just meant a lack, meant something was missing, but it did not encompass the totality of this severance, this terrifying un-anchoring from all that he’d ever known.”
38. “‘Be selfish,’ he whispered. ‘Be brave.’”
39. “Language was always the companion of empire, and as such, together they begin, grow, and flourish. And later, together, they fall.”
40. “The foundations of an empire are slender and fragile. Take away the center, and what’s left? A gasping periphery, baseless, powerless, cut down at the roots.”
41. “What is the opposite of fidelity?’ asked Professor Playfair. He was approaching the end of his dialectic; now he needed only to draw it to a close with a punch. ‘Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, it means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So, where does that leave us? How can we conclude except by acknowledging that an act of translation is always an act of betrayal?”
42. “How slender, how fragile, the foundations of an empire. Take away the centre, and what’s left? A gasping periphery, baseless, powerless, cut down at the roots.”
43. “But the future, vague as it was frightening, was easily ignored for now; it paled so against the brilliance of the present.”
44. “They were men at Oxford; they were not Oxford men. But the enormity of this knowledge was so devastating, such a vicious antithesis to the three golden days they’d blindly enjoyed, that neither of them could say it out loud.”
45. “The origins of the word ‘anger’ were tied closely to physical suffering. ‘Anger’ was first an ‘affliction’, as meant by the Old Icelandic angr, and then a ‘painful, cruel, narrow’ state, as meant by the Old English enge, which in term came from the Latin angor, which meant ‘strangling, anguish, distress’.”
46. “That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
47. “Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
48. “If we push in the right spots – then we’ve moved things to the breaking point. Then the future becomes fluid, and change is possible.”
49. “My point being, abolition happened because white people found reasons to care – whether those be economic or religious. You just have to make them think they came up with the idea themselves. You can’t appeal to their inner goodness. I have never met an Englishman I trusted to do the right thing out of sympathy.”
50. “Why, he wondered, did white people get so very upset when anyone disagreed with them?”
Buy Babel by R.F. Kuang Now
Have you read this book yet, or do you think you’ll pick it up soon?
Let me know your thoughts – I’d love to chat about it with you!
I’ve also put together some of my favorite quotes from other amazing books I’ve read, so if you’re curious, don’t forget to check out the related posts below.
