Tafaisok > Tafaisok's Quotes

“She didn’t care whose eyes were whose; but she was a little vain, and cared about being nice-looking.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Tell Cam I said it was a water cure,” to which Camilla remarked that Palamedes was an enabler. It didn’t matter to Nona. She had already got her towel and the old shirt she used to swim in—much easier to go naked, but the others had all objected to this, and Cam had said it would make her a sniper target”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Nona’s plate was left still mostly full, despite one genuine effort to eat and two not-so genuine ones where she faked it.
“You can eat three more mouthfuls, or two and drink some water,” said Camilla inflexibly.
“But I’ve eaten so much today.”
“You ate gruel and a sausage roll.”
“But I’m full, I’m really full.”
“Have you been eating sand again?”
“I haven’t eaten sand in months,” Nona protested, then more truthfully: “Weeks,” and more truthfully than that: “One week.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Nona did not close her eyes this time, but stared hard at the black mould marks on the ceiling, as though for inspiration,”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“The other day Honesty said he thought nice shoes were sexy, and Beautiful Ruby said what just the shoes, and Honesty said no there had to be feet in them, and Born in the Morning got mad and said that Honesty was just being cheap, everyone had feet.”
Camilla tilted her head, unwound herself from Nona—Nona was a little disappointed, Cam’s hair smelled so much like nice dust—and took the clipboard back. “Okay. What do you think is sexy?”
Nona cheered up immediately at being asked.
“The huge old poster up on the side of the building at the end of the street—the one the dairy’s in. The old poster for shampoo.”
Camilla looked at her for a few seconds too many. “The painting of the two flowers,” she said.
“I think they’re very sexy flowers,” said Nona. “All right, your turn! Tell me what you think is sexy.”
“Eating breakfast,” said Camilla.
Nona lifted up her voice in despair. “You don’t. It’s not fair. We’re having a heart-to-heart, I’m sharing deep personal thoughts, and you just want me to eat.”
― Tamsyn Muir

“worm with problems”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“He was a big boy and easily old enough to go to the bathroom by himself, but Kevin had such a huge facility for freaking out and locking himself in places that you had to wait until he’d finished peeing to make sure you didn’t need to bust a door lock open with half a brick”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Nona could do nothing but hug her knees to her chest and feel fantastically, wonderfully lucky, luckier than anyone else who had ever had the pleasure of being born.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Remember to stuff,” before the guards shuffled her onward with the butts of their rifles. As though she wouldn’t. When Nona was locked away in the bathroom stall stealing toilet paper, judiciously stuffing it down her shirt as Pyrrha had taught her—Pyrrha had a very Blood of Eden mindset, if you thought about it—she heard Camilla outside by the sinks, saying quietly: “Let me see her.”
Crown said, as though casually surprised, “Do you really want to? It’s not a good day. She’s in and out … Moving her has been a royal bitch. We’ve had to keep shifting her between beds ever since we got her here.”
“Okay. Let me see her.”
“If you agitate—”
Camilla said, “You know I can help her, Third. You know I want to.”
It seemed like Crown was going to say a joke or something dismissive again, but then she said, “So long as Dve doesn’t tag along. Your call.”
When Nona rustled her way out of the stall, Camilla looked at her chest, and her mouth quirked in something that might have been the tiniest and most beautiful smile yet. But Crown didn’t notice.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Not my name anymore, and none of us are good,” said Crown. “Except for Nona, of course.”
“Thanks,” said Nona, deeply flattered.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“You darling, I know what you are, even if they refuse to see it,” she said softly. “All I can say, sweetheart, is I envy you more than anyone else in the universe.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Hot Sauce,” she said timidly, “I don’t want you to be sad or mad if anything happens to me. Promise not to be sad—I don’t like it on your face.”
There was a flicker of surprise across Hot Sauce’s eyelashes. But then the others ragged her at the idea that anyone would be sad if she died, and they got into an argument about who would inherit her share of fruit that day as it hadn’t been bagsed, which turned into another fight between Born in the Morning and Honesty, who had not forgiven each other for the rabbit punches and both of whom started promising their worldly goods to anyone who wasn’t each other. Honesty had recovered, although his eye looked even puffier and more multicoloured than it had the day before. The teacher had given him some painkillers to take but he had cunningly spat them out and dried them for resale, so he was entirely happy.
Nona came away promised, on Born in the Morning’s death, a pen that wrote in three different colours, and on Honesty’s his collection of paper throwing stars.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Kevin after a good feed was reliably dead to the world for at least forty minutes”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“We are one flesh.” Clack.
“I am your end.”
Pause. “That didn’t mean I got squatting rights in your soul. I never would have asked for that. I never had rights to that.”
Clack. “Sure. That’s why I gave them to you.”
Clack. Pause. Pause. Pause.
“I hope you know that I adore you, Scholar.”
Clack. “Indubitably, Warden.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Nona, wanting very much to be good, drank all the water and ate half the pottle fuelled by martyred smugness that she was behaving so well.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“No, and I didn’t want to ruin that, Honesty always gets in trouble and it’s terrible,” said Nona. “And it’s not fair trying to talk calmly and sadly about my responsibilities when I know you’re thinking, ‘Nona, I want to beat you up with the broom handle.’ Just say, ‘Nona, I want to beat you up with the broom handle.’”
“I’d never use the broom handle on you,” said Palamedes.
Nona was mollified.
“You wouldn’t feel it. If Cam and I didn’t love you as much as we do,” said Palamedes, “we would take turns throttling you, then give all your magazines to charity.”
Palamedes had never said the word love before. More than anything—even the idea of her beloved magazines going to charity, as though others were more deserving than Nona, the most deserving person on the planet—this broke her.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“In my opinion, Lieutenant Crown has betrayed us all with a promptness and the eagerness you do not normally see outside cheap plays at the theatre. And I believed … she swore a thousand times … she made the sniper order, you see.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“You are saying this as if it makes things worse, when from my chair things are looking only better,” said We Suffer. She was starting to perk up, by We Suffer standards, which meant that her eyes had narrowed a bit. “The same building contains both Gideon Nav—whom I want in a bag—and a Lyctor, now apparently neutered—whom I want in a box. And here I am, with a bag and a large number of boxes.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Honesty was right there behind her shoulder, saying mulishly, “I don’t care—I don’t care. She’s always gonna be my friend, boss. I won’t ditch a girl like that, a girl who thinks of my business like that. I’d go into business with a girl like that, boss, okay?”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Oh my God,” she said, in a panic. “I forgot about Noodle.”
The windshield cracked all the way across the middle. Paul leant their full weight on the accelerator. Nona drove the truck home.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“You’re here! You’re really here! I thought you wouldn’t come,” she said ecstatically. She threw her arms around Honesty’s shoulders. “You said you wouldn’t come anymore, Honesty. You said you were going to get a job.”
“I need to get fed, don’t I. I’m a growing man,” said Honesty, who had gone red staring at Camilla, who loitered in the foyer a little way away from them. “Get out of it, Nona, stop being in love with me.”
But she was already hugging Beautiful Ruby, who coped better with it, saying: “Nona, you crim! Did you really sneak off to the—” and for his pains was jabbed in the ribs by Honesty and Nona, so he said at the top of his voice, “Toilet,” and they all dissolved together into a huddle of whispers, with Kevin right at the bottom.
“She doesn’t know! Don’t tell her,” hissed Nona.
“Whew, lad, good save there,” said Honesty.
“Don’t be sarcastic at me,” hissed Ruby. “It’s not my fault, I just wanted to know how Nona was, you know they could’ve still been getting her off the road with a spatula. I walk past that road and they’re cremating people, like, right there, I saw somebody’s arm.”
“Ew,” said Kevin.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Ianthe looked at you; her blue-and-brown eyes were beatific. “Harry,” she said, and she said it tenderly, “have you never read a trashy novel in which the hero gets a life-affirming change of clothes and some makeup, and then goes to the party and everyone says things like, ‘By the Emperor’s bones! But you’re beautiful,’ or, ‘This is the first time I have ever truly seen you,’ and if the hero’s a necromancer it’ll be described like, ‘His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral,’ et cetera, et cetera, the word mewled fifteen pages later, the word nipple one page after that?” You said emphatically: “No.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“As I’ve been told tiresomely often, a half-cocked version of something is significantly worse than not being cocked at all.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“He say anything?” Gideon wavered. “He said to tell you he loved you,” she said. “What? No, he didn’t.” “Okay, no, sorry. He said—he said you knew what to do?”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“Harrow,” said Gideon, “if my heart had a dick you would kick it.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“Harrowhark’s talent had always been in scale, in making a fully realised construct from as little as an arm bone or a pelvis, able to make an army of them from what anyone else would need for one, and in some far-off way Gideon had always known that this would be how she went: gangbanged to death by skeletons.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“Cam,” Palamedes said. “Go loud.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“As I dithered, Pyrrha sandblasted me with the calm, "Your mother would've picked the bullet. "
"Yes, well, jail for Mother, " I said.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“Avra,” said Teveri in a very different tone to what they had been using. “Please get in the boat.”
Avra gasped and clapped a hand to his heart in genuine horror. “Tev, you can’t do that.”
“Please, Avra, I would really like it if you got in the boat.”
Avra looked to the crew for support; they met his eyes expressionlessly, except for Julian, who had sucked both lips into his mouth to bite back a smile. Avra turned back to Teveri and spluttered for a moment. “These tactics are beneath you, Teveri.”
― Alexandra Rowland, Running Close to the Wind

“Should we be wary of snakes, do you think?” Julian asked as it became harder and harder to see their own feet.
“You think I’d have the bad luck to get bitten by a snake?”
“Let me rephrase: Should I be wary of snakes, do you think?”
“You could if you wanted to.” Avra shrugged. “Or you could hold hands with me, and then you wouldn’t have to worry about snakes any more than I do.”
“Is that how it works?” Julian said, amused.
Avra turned and winked at him. “Maybe, who’s to say?” After a moment, he added, “I winked, just so you know. I can’t see your face that well anymore, so you probably didn’t see the wink.”
“I appreciate that. I did, however, sense a general air of winks.”
“Holding hands so you don’t get bitten by snakes probably doesn’t count as breaking your vow of celibacy,” Avra said with a little hair toss that Julian probably also couldn’t see very well. “Just pointing that out.”
“That’s a reasonable argument,” said Julian, which wasn’t true at all, but then his hand slipped into Avra’s.
“Hrkg,” said Avra. After a long moment, silent but for the crunch of the forest floor under his feet, he giggled in a delirious little panic.
“It starts counting more if you do that,” Julian said solemnly.”
― Alexandra Rowland, Running Close to the Wind