Top 50 Christopher Buehlman Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “We just don’t deserve dogs, do we?”

— Christopher Buehlman

2. “When listening for danger, one must never mistake silence for safety.”

— Christopher Buehlman

3. “Happiness is the province of those who ask few questions.”

— Christopher Buehlman

4. “But it will be harder for you if you remember. Love is always harder. Love means weathering blows for another’s sake and not counting them. Love is loss of self, loss of other, and faith in the death of loss.”

— Christopher Buehlman

5. “The dead shouldn’t cry, not even the lesser dead.”

— Christopher Buehlman

6. “A mundane lie hiding an exotic truth is deception; an exotic lie hiding a mundane truth is storytelling. Deception may be necessary to preserve life, but storytelling makes life worth living.”

— Christopher Buehlman

7. “How easily the paint of civilization peels off with a little bad weather.”

— Christopher Buehlman

8. “There comes a time when loneliness is stronger than fear.”

— Christopher Buehlman

9. “The world has become a playground of idiots and zealots, where the ever-shrinking centre of reasonable men must work harder and harder to keep the lights on and the bombs from going off.”

— Christopher Buehlman

10. “One of the hardest and truest things a grown-up learns is that sometimes it’s not okay.”

— Christopher Buehlman

11. “You’d probably rather have a milk shake than a quart of blood, too, so we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

— Christopher Buehlman

12. “I mostly drink clear booze because the rest of it looks it’s already been through a gentleman.”

— Christopher Buehlman

13. “No crown sits so sure that a knife in the dark may not topple it.”

— Christopher Buehlman

14. “We often live next to monsters unawares.”

— Christopher Buehlman

15. “Modern life makes so many of us strangely empty.”

— Christopher Buehlman

16. “Well, I do what I say. Which is why I don’t say much.”

— Christopher Buehlman

17. “May laughter keep us young and malice keep us rich.”

— Christopher Buehlman

18. “It’s sad, but the world’s made of sadness. if you hadn’t noticed, great gray bricks of it and mortared all together with pain and obligation.”

— Christopher Buehlman

19. “Spear had picked up her lost hand and run into the forest like she knew a sewer-on of hands whose shop closed soon.”

— Christopher Buehlman

20. “Some righteous men and women yet held faith, but they were scattered so far that none could see the other’s light, and it seemed the darkness had no end.”

— Christopher Buehlman

21. “How did Heaven come into all of this? Heaven was life, not death. Heaven was a woman holding your head in the crook of her arm and looking down at you. Heaven was a warm hand on your cheek and the smell of soup with garlic on the fire.”

— Christopher Buehlman

22. “Only the strong, the rich, and the dying think truth is a necessity; the rest of us know it for a luxury.”

— Christopher Buehlman

23. “When Delphine saw the knight’s eyes soften, she reached her small hand out, and he took it in his large one. And she led him down to the stream, and, with its cool water, washed his head and his feet, and helped him wash the anger from his heart.”

— Christopher Buehlman

24. “Thomas had never been so afraid. I can’t I can’t I can’t, he thought, even as he drove his legs forward through the muck to meet it.”

— Christopher Buehlman

25. “I’m going to take you someplace dark and damp where good people don’t go. I’m going to introduce you to monsters. Real ones. I’m going to tell you stories about hurting people, and if you like those stories, it means you’re bad.”

— Christopher Buehlman

26. “Thomas looked at her standing with her delicate arms and legs and thought how odd it was that children were small, and that they found this normal. He could not remember being small. What must he look like to her, standing so far above her, holding that murderous hammer? What did it feel like to know you lived or died at the whim of the giants around you?”

— Christopher Buehlman

27. “I’m a man who will always choose to know.”

— Christopher Buehlman

28. “It’s always the big, thick wankers saying “don’t lie,” isn’t it? Only the strong, the rich and the dying think truth is a necessity. The rest of us know it for a luxury.”

— Christopher Buehlman

29. “Molrovan sounds like a man getting kicked to death with hot broth in his mouth.”

— Christopher Buehlman

30. “The injuries of spring are forgotten in the summer, but remembered in the winter.”

— Christopher Buehlman

31. “Love is always harder. Love means weathering blows for another’s sake and not counting them.”

— Christopher Buehlman

32. “The surest way to make one love you is to hurt them.”

— Christopher Buehlman

33. “Goddamn it,” Thomas said, gazing at her small cache. “Maybe God would be more generous if you swore less.” “God starves babies sometimes, and they don’t swear at all.”

— Christopher Buehlman

34. “I won’t be your dog, but if you’re half the wolf I think you are, you’ve found a fox to run with.”

— Christopher Buehlman

35. “A thousand flatterers are not worth one person who is willing to wipe your ass.”

— Christopher Buehlman

36. “When it croaked out of my mouth, I meant it as statement of fact, but looking back, it sounded perfectly weird, ambiguous, and off-putting, so it was just the right thing.”

— Christopher Buehlman

37. “He was the kind of god you prayed to for making water wet and fire hot, or for keeping giants out of a land where nobody has seen a giant for a thousand years. He was good at the easy things.”

— Christopher Buehlman

38. “To be loved by a man is to be issued a decree as written in advance and as presented to others. To receive a woman’s love is to have a very personal letter written on one’s body.”

— Christopher Buehlman

39. “A dark-haired little boy just in pants stood bewildered near the blaze, saying, as if there had been some mistake, “We live here. We live here.”

— Christopher Buehlman

40. “He let himself love her because he knew she would not love him back.”

— Christopher Buehlman

41. “Men love a woman who doesn’t seem to give a damn, so long as she’s handsome. We also love a happy woman, so long as she’s fair, or a sad pretty one, or an angry girleen with a good face. You see how this works.”

— Christopher Buehlman

42. “She was tempted by something stronger than her. Adam was tempted by a weaker creature. Or so we are told. If Eve was his inferior, his sin was greater. You can’t have it both ways.”

— Christopher Buehlman

43. “There’s nothing like the stars far out at sea, with no torch nor lantern to argue their majesty with them.”

— Christopher Buehlman

44. “This pestilence cooked away pretense and showed people’s souls, as surely as it eventually showed their bones.”

— Christopher Buehlman

45. “Monarchy is a bad system because, no matter how smart you are, you can still squirt a moron out of your plumbing. Maybe you get lucky and your son or daughter is at least half as smart as you – what about your grandchild? Probably a knob, and when they inherit the throne, everything you built falls to shyte.”

— Christopher Buehlman

46. “Rao rao, Bully Boy, rao.”

— Christopher Buehlman

47. “Weapons!” Malk cried, but he had none. I drew my dagger, feeling I’d do just as well to wave my manhood at it, had that not already shrunk itself as far in my body as it could go.”

— Christopher Buehlman

48. “I do not need to be loved as deeply as I love, and I do not need to speak of it.”

— Christopher Buehlman

49. “And at precisely that moment a sparrow in the tree above Thomas shat in his.”

— Christopher Buehlman

50. “I do not need to be loved as deeply as I love, and I do not need to speak of it. All I knew was that she remembered me in this moment. And one moment is all there ever is.”

— Christopher Buehlman