T. Kingfisher > Quotes

“How did you get a demon in your chicken?'

'The usual way. Couldn't put it in the rooster. That's how you get basilisks.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“People get hung up on happiness and joy, but fun will take you at least as far and it's generally cheaper to obtain.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“ If I were a man, I would fight him.
If she were a man, no one would force Kania to try to bear child after child. If I were a man, I would not be the next in line to be married if he kills her. If we were men… She stared at her fingers curled into the dirt. It did not matter. They were not and the history of the world was written in women’s wombs and women’s blood and she would never be allowed to change it.
Rage shivered through her, a rage that seemed like it could topple the halls of heaven, then vanished under the knowledge of her own helplessness. Rage was only useful if you were allowed to do anything with it.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“Look, if you don't make a fool of yourself over animals, at least in private, you aren't to be trusted.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don't ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“The love of a bone dog, she thought, bending her head down over the paw again. All that I am worth these days.

Then again, few humans were truly worth the love of a living dog. Some gifts you could never deserve.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“If we don’t pretend we’re laughing, we might have to admit just how broken we are.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“Rage was only useful if you were allowed to do anything with it.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“Relief feels like happiness, if you don’t know the difference.”
― T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Grace

“I’m suggesting that if you’re going to bring hell down upon someone’s head, you should dress for the occasion.”
― T. Kingfisher, The Seventh Bride

“I fear that I am not the best possible person for this, but I am the best possible person available at this time, which is much the same thing.”
― T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Grace

“Lots of people deserve to die,” said the dust-wife finally. “Not everybody deserves to be a killer.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“Goblin tea resembles a nice cup of Earl Grey in much the same way that a catfish resembles the common tabby. They share a name, but one is a nice thing to curl up with on a rainy afternoon, and the other is found in the muck at the bottom of polluted rivers and has bits of debris sticking to it.”
― T. Kingfisher

“She brutalized flour and butter, she visited wartime atrocities to milk and yeast. She committed acts of crumpet.”
― T. Kingfisher, Toad Words and Other Stories

“All women are beautiful,” said Istvhan, dismissing this. “It is the job of their lovers to make them feel that way if they do not already.”
― T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Grace

“You didn’t fail,” I said. “They wouldn’t let you succeed. It’s different.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“It's because you're too much alike. What did the abbess used to say? That our own flaws infuriate us in other people?”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“It was hard to be frightened of the unknown when the unknown kept chickens.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“Inspiration knocks now and again, but spite bangs on the door all year long.”
― T. Kingfisher, Clockwork Boys

“If we limited loving to just the sane, undamaged people, the next generation would have about three people in it and presumably humanity would die out shortly afterward.”
― T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Grace

“ Wait and see. The world is not always cruel.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“Hours passed, like a kidney stone.”
― T. Kingfisher, Clockwork Boys

“ Nothing is fair, except that we try to make it so. That’s the point of humans, maybe, to fix the things the gods haven’t managed.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“Come on, let's go back to the coffee shop and I'll make us Irish coffees and we'll discuss this like people who don't die in the first five minutes of a horror movie.”
― T. Kingfisher, The Hollow Places

“But I shouldn’t have had to do any of it. There should have been so many grown-ups who should have fixed things before it got down to me and Spindle. It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“Sometimes it's hard to know if someone is insulting or just an American.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“I am never sure what to think of Americans. Their brashness can be charming, but just when I decide that I rather like them, I meet one that I wish would go back to America, and then perhaps keep going off the far edge, into the sea.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“You are not a failure, you know,” he said, “simply because you can’t endure something unendurable.”
― T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Strength

“She made dramatic plans in the darkness and discarded them in daylight.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone