Sha > Sha's Quotes

“The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Globe

“The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“But he's mad, completely mad, and he turns his wives into golems. He needs killing, not negotiation.”
― T. Kingfisher, The Seventh Bride

“That sort doesn’t like to admit she’s been reduced to stealing food, thought the cook. Poor soul! It’s only a few apples. Lord, if you’re watching, those apples are freely given. You don’t hold them against her soul. (The cook was in the habit of lecturing the Lord, whom she considered a colleague.)”
― T. Kingfisher, Toad Words and Other Stories

“It wasn’t that she particularly wanted to be fattened up and eaten, or turned into a donkey, or forced to wear hair shirts and ashes like the children of wicked parents in fairy tales. But if your parents were wicked, you needn’t worry about pleasing them. When they were doing the best they could, you had no traction at all.”
― T. Kingfisher, The Seventh Bride

“The Beast looked faintly alarmed.
"Don't worry, I never stab anyone twice in the same hour. I don't want them to think I'm unoriginal."
"I confess, I am more afraid you will clip me bald."
"Vain Beast.”
― T. Kingfisher, Bryony and Roses

“Oh good,” said the Beast dryly. “Here I was afraid that I had kidnapped a sane person by mistake.”  “If you are going to kidnap travelers, you will simply have to take what you can get,” snapped Bryony.”
― T. Kingfisher, Bryony and Roses

“All you had were pigs and enthusiasm. It’s not your fault.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nine Goblins

“The bear not only had a set of stripes sewn on his arm, it was possibly the first teddy-bear in history to have received a medal for service to the elven nation.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nine Goblins

“She had presumably decided that the problem was the village, and if everybody in the village was gone, they would have to bring John back to take care of her. It was the sort of plan a child would come up with—simple, self-centered, and utterly heartless.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nine Goblins

“The third house had a man living alone. He told her three times over supper that his wife had died and how lonely it was for him, and tried twice to touch her hair. His lower lip trembled when he talked. Gerta offered to sweep the porch, left a copper on the step to pay for her supper, and slipped away. I may have spent the last seven months under a spell, she thought grimly, but I’m not a total fool.  ”
― T. Kingfisher, The Raven and the Reindeer

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
― Terry Pratchett

“To people who think they're the best the world has to offer, kindness is an afterthought and an unnecessary one at that.”
― Seanan McGuire, Tricks for Free

“Because ‘boys will be boys’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Lundy. “They’re too loud, on the whole, to be easily misplaced or overlooked; when they disappear from the home, parents send search parties to dredge them out of swamps and drag them away from frog ponds. It’s not innate. It’s learned. But it protects them from the doors, keeps them safe at home. Call it irony, if you like, but we spend so much time waiting for our boys to stray that they never have the opportunity. We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“For us, places we went were home. We didn't care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn't have to pretend to be something we weren't. We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“Everyone thinks of them in terms of poisoned apples and glass coffins, and forgets that they represent girls who walked into dark forests and remade them into their own reflections.”
― Seanan McGuire, Indexing

“asexual” and “aromantic” were different things. She liked holding hands and trading kisses. She’d had several boyfriends in elementary school, just like most of the other girls, and she had always found those practice relationships completely satisfying. It wasn’t until puberty had come along and changed the rules that she’d started pulling away in confusion and disinterest.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“No walking! No standing, no bending, no moving, no accessing the Shadow Roads, nothing. You don't swim for an hour after eating, you don't swan around like an idiot for an hour after narrowly avoiding death.'

'Toby does,' said Quentin.

'Toby is genetically predisposed to swan around like an idiot,' Jin shot back. 'Now sit.”
― Seanan McGuire, Ashes of Honor

“I stared at her. "But she drugged us."

"That is no longer news, dumbass. Are you going to ask why she drugged you?"

"Allright," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Why?"

"Because, dear October, you're the most passively suicidal person I've ever met, and that's saying something. You'll never open your wrists, but you'll run headfirst into hell. You'll have good reasons. You'll have great reasons, even. And a part of you will be praying that you won't come out again.”
― Seanan McGuire, An Artificial Night

“Australia. The only continent designed with a difficulty rating of “ha ha fuck you no.”
― Seanan McGuire, Half-Off Ragnarok

“The Argentine tango isn't here to play nicely with the other children. The Argentine tango is here to seduce your women, spill things on your rug, and sneak out your bedroom window in the middle of the night.”
― Seanan McGuire, Discount Armageddon

“Repetition is sometimes the best way to deal with the Luidaeg: just keep saying the same thing over and over until she gets fed up and gives you what you want. All preschoolers have an instinctive grasp of this concept, but most don’t practice it on immortal water demons. That’s probably why there are so few disembowelments in your average preschool.”
― Seanan McGuire, A Local Habitation

“Anyone who thinks cryptozoology is the study of the impossible has never really taken a very good look at the so-called "natural world." Once you get past the megamouth sharks, naked mole rats, and spotted hyenas, then the basilisks, dragons, and cuckoos just don't seem that unreasonable. Unpleasant, yes, but unreasonable? Not really.”
― Seanan McGuire, Discount Armageddon

“Since Dominic's been sleeping with me, the mice have been trying various labels on him, looking for one that fits. My personal favorite was the week they spent calling him "the God of Absolutely Never Smiling, No, Not Ever.”
― Seanan McGuire, Midnight Blue-Light Special

“I require something so horrifically alcoholic that it makes livers tremble with fear and run for their lives when its name is uttered.”
― Seanan McGuire, Midnight Blue-Light Special

“My manners have always been the first thing to go when I get upset, and some people say that they stopped coming back a long time ago.​”
― Seanan McGuire, Rosemary and Rue

“It’s not that Etienne dislikes Tybalt. Etienne just dislikes chaos, and Tybalt causes almost as much commotion as I do. Sometimes more, when he really sets his mind to it, although my chaos is a little more destructive, if I do say so myself.”
― Seanan McGuire, Ashes of Honor

“Well, that’s not something you see every day. Go tell your father that Grandma needs the grenades.”
― Seanan McGuire, Midnight Blue-Light Special

“You are covered in blood," Tybalt said again, stressing the words harder this time. "It makes me tense." There was a thud as the guard hit the floor, and Tybalt returned to my side.
"Wow. You must be tense a lot."
He sighed. "You have no idea.”
― Seanan McGuire, Chimes at Midnight

“ALL GLORY TO THE SCIENCE RULES OF SCIENCE!”
― Seanan McGuire, Half-Off Ragnarok