Quenby Olson > Quotes

“I'm sorry," he says, his fingers closing around mine. "You shouldn't be looking at such..."

"Such what?" I ask, a question that is rapidly chased by another. "And why not?"

He glances down at the pictures, then tears his gaze away, dragging it back to my face. "Well, because it's improper, for one thing."

How cruel it would be of me to ask for a second thing, if only to watch him stumble and stammer while his gaze struggles not to dip down to those portraits a second time. "It may have escaped your notice at some point during our acquaintance, but I am a woman. And as shocking as it may be for you to believe, I have seen myself naked on more than one occasion, so you'll pardon me if I am not offended by anything these ladies have to offer.”
― Quenby Olson, The Half Killed

“We cannot know what lies ahead of us. Our futures are not for us to divine. But what I do know, or what I believe, is that there is indeed a path laid out before us, one we cannot see. And yet we must walk it, placing one foot in front of the other, with our eyes blind and our hearts trusting that we will not lose our way.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Travel Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons

“It was once a commonly-held belief that dragons were nothing more than creatures pocketed into the realm of myth and fairytale. But man also once believed the Earth to be flat, and that we sat with prim and unswerving confidence at the center of the universe. Now it is merely man himself who believes himself to be seated at the center of everything.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons

“I want more of this. I want to go on adventures with you for the rest of my days—”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Travel Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons

“how were others to know that beneath her cloak of adept composure there existed a panicked thing, alternately crying and screaming and longing for a nap and all while craving something glazed in sugar?”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons

“This was happiness, she realized. To have purpose. To be needed. To be loved and cared for and respected. To have her adventure, wherever it might lead her next.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Travel Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons

“Perhaps adventures could be for ladies of a certain age, ladies who might have reached a point in their lives when they had quietly given up on the world beyond their kitchen garden as being a place for them to explore. Perhaps adventures were ready and available to anyone and everyone who was willing to take one on.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Travel Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons

“Much like a young child, a dragon you can neither hear nor see is one that is at its most dangerous.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Travel Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons

“ever told her that sometimes the things that scared one the most were the things one had to leave behind them? “Mildred.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons

“I see a miracle,” Mr. Wiggan said. His voice was quiet, as though his thoughts were still spinning around inside his head and this was their first, tentative step into audible life. “I see the power of the Divine, working its will through that woman’s voice and hands as she heals a child from a most serious injury. But if all you see there is darkness and evil,” he swung his head around to stare at Mr. Jones, brow lightly furrowed. “Then perhaps it is the state of your own heart that needs to be examined, rather than anyone else hoping and praying for this boy’s swift recovery.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“He would diminish, but not disappear entirely. Find a life that would suit him, a quiet one, with enough comfort to keep him satisfied and enough difficulty to prevent him from becoming bored.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“Dragons are perfectly capable of hunting and providing for themselves without human interference, though they are notorious for taking advantage of an outsider’s offer of sustenance whenever the opportunity presents itself.

— from Chapter Eleven of Miss Percy’s Travel Guide (to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons)”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Travel Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons

“with a clink of empty bottles and the bow of an unforeseen character arc stretching overhead,”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“It was a charming falsehood she often told herself, that the act of reading was something akin to a cup of warm milk in literary form, that only a few pages read would see her eyes droop and her thoughts grow weary before she would swiftly succumb to blissful slumber…and then she would sit awake half the night, each page imprinting itself in the place of another lost minute of dreams…a far more accurate description would be to say that the smudged ink from each word accumulated beneath her eyes into a telltale shadow of forfeited sleep and few regrets.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Travel Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons

“Mildred swallowed. (Nervous people tend to do a great deal of swallowing at key moments, so this is simply a brief note from the author reminding you, the reader, of this fact rather than leave you to exist under the misapprehension that I, the author, cannot think of another action to give my characters in order to show how difficult a time this is for them. I am quite sure they would rather swallow more than usual than give way to the ascending dread caused by having a bitey winged crocodile with chicken-legs nestled in a basket only a few feet away from them. Thank you.)”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons

“Little matters such as “laws” and “morals” rarely prevented people from exacting whatever justice they saw fit when it came time, in their view, to exact it.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“To my cat, Dog (Nermal, Jerkface): You peed on our things. You brought us mice and let them loose in the house. We constantly had to trim your rear end hair so you wouldn’t get poop caught in it. And the hairballs, oh my gosh. But there would absolutely and 100% be no Fitz without you. I love you and I miss”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons

“That manner of comfort had been injurious and stifling, like an old chair that appeared inviting but in the end offered no support, leaving one with stiff joints and an aching back, a slow deterioration; and all because it was too easy to cling to old, worn habits.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“Dragons and magic were seen as a fine holiday roast: not something one often indulged in, but treated with veneration and excitement when it did finally appear on the table.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“It is only in recent years that tales of dragons and mythological beasts have been relegated to the ranks of "mere" children's stories and fairy tales. But it is wise to remember that such stories shaped humankind's love of literature, of all manner of written work. The image of the roaming bard, gracing the ears of his listeners with an account of gods and goddesses, of Cerberus and the Minotaur, of narratives now considered as classics set aside for serious study in their original and ancient languages, is one we would do well to remember. Those tales are the foundation of us, of our very societies. And so perhaps we should not be so quick to dismiss something "fantastical" as being beneath notice, as it would be akin to dismissing a gleaming facet of human history from our time on this earth.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons

“There were things she certainly wished to say, confessions and declarations that had simmered inside of her to a point she worried had gone beyond speaking. Even now seemed like the least auspicious of times to crack open her heart, but the last few months had taught her there really was no perfect time for anything, and she could age her way to dust waiting for an opportunity to step up and allow herself to have a turn.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“All we ever have will always be the only thing I ever want, as long as I am with you.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“Stress did not suit her, no matter how many people throughout her life had referred to her ability to remain calm in a crisis as something to be complimented. But then, how were others to know that beneath her cloak of adept composure there existed a panicked thing, alternately crying and screaming and longing for a nap and all while craving something glazed in sugar?”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons

“Momentous events had a way of doing that, she’d learned, of waiting until someone was the least prepared and the most distracted by other matters to spring themselves upon a person.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“Foolishly, she had believed that tremendous change could only be achieved over a long span of time, like the carving of mountains or the growth of a particularly large tree with aspirations towards primeval.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“changing from a pleasant absence of color to an alarming shade of trauma.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“the bricks and wrought iron covered in enough ivy and weeds to make Mildred believe the wall itself could be taken away while the greenery would remain standing, a surer barricade than anything mankind could construct.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons

“She looked at Mrs. Merrick, still limned in the grief from her husband’s death, as though it had reshaped her much as a flooded river could carve its way through a sodden bank. One couldn’t simply pile the soil back in place once the waters had receded.”
― Quenby Olson, Miss Percy's Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons