Top 300 T. Kingfisher Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A bird with feathers made of fire watched over them, in a cage with bars that shone like moonlight.”

— T. Kingfisher

2. “He fixed her with a thoughtful look, and it occurred to her that his eyes were the colour of sun-warmed earth, and she did not quite know what to do about it.”

— T. Kingfisher

3. “Fairy tales,” said the dust-wife heavily, “are very hard on bystanders. Particularly old women. I’d rather not dance myself to death in iron shoes, if it’s all the same to you.”

— T. Kingfisher

4. “Relief feels like happiness, if you don’t know the difference.”

— T. Kingfisher

5. “His voice had that light veneer of humor that we all get, because if we don’t pretend we’re laughing, we might have to admit just how broken we are. It’s like telling stories at the bar about the worst pain you’ve ever been in. You laugh and you brag about it, and it turns the pain into something that will buy you a drink.”

— T. Kingfisher

6. “Same thing.” He took a deep breath, clearly choosing his words carefully. “A gnole’s compassion does not require fur.”

— T. Kingfisher

7. “The hole in your heart is very large. Be careful what you allow to fill it.”

— T. Kingfisher

8. “My hair is a comb-eating monster that is technically “curly,” in the same way that a cassowary is technically a bird.”

— T. Kingfisher

9. “It was really very sweet, and so if someone asked me about Thornhedge, I would probably say that it is a sweet book, and then presumably someone would point out that the heroine is raised by child-eating fish monsters and the villain is torturing people and animating the dead, and I would be left flailing my hands around and saying, “But it’s sweet! Really!”

— T. Kingfisher

10. “This comes of always being the practical one, she thought, a bit wearily. Nobody will comfort you, so you learn to do it yourself.”

— T. Kingfisher

11. “I would know you anywhere. I would recognize you at the bottom of a mineshaft on a moonless light, if I were deaf and blind.”

— T. Kingfisher

12. “Waffle House at four in the morning is a liminal space occupied by long-haul truckers, bleary-eyed shift workers, and teenagers so high they can smell God’s breath.”

— T. Kingfisher

13. “I can’t wait for you to meet him. You’ll say such horrible things to each other. I’m sure you’ll be friends.”

— T. Kingfisher

14. “There was a doily on the chest of drawers. I eyed it warily. I have nothing against doilies, but they’re a slippery slope. You start with doilies, then pretty soon it’s crocheted table runners and then it’s a short step to antimacassars.”

— T. Kingfisher

15. “If we don’t pretend we’re laughing, we might have to admit just how broken we are.”

— T. Kingfisher

16. “Look, if you don’t make a fool of yourself over animals, at least in private, you aren’t to be trusted.”

— T. Kingfisher

17. “The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do.”

— T. Kingfisher

18. “Really stupid people die all the time. And if they can manage it, I oughta have no problem.”

— T. Kingfisher

19. “She wasn’t stupid, though. There was a sharp, glittering intelligence inside the insanity that had learned early on that it was much easier to get away with being insane if you were also useful and had a little bit of money, and if people were just a little bit scared of you.”

— T. Kingfisher

20. “You got tired of waiting around for a worthy husband to present himself,” continued Gran Aischa, “so you went out, with your trusted raven, to find the prince wise enough to speak to you without fear.” She brought her hands together. “And you are still looking, but one day, I’m sure, you’ll find him.”

— T. Kingfisher

21. “But when I think of desecrating a grave, I do not feel dread but revulsion. I am not afraid of what lies in the grave, but it would be dishonorable. Disgusting, even. I do not fear retribution; I fear what sort of person I would become by doing it.”

— T. Kingfisher

22. “Three tasks the dust-wife had given her. Sew a cloak of owlcloth and nettles, build a dog of cursed bones, and catch moonlight in a jar of clay.”

— T. Kingfisher

23. “You are not a failure, you know,” he said, “simply because you can’t endure something unendurable.”

— T. Kingfisher

24. “The boutique clothing store goes out of business approximately once a year, whereupon someone buys it, changes out the name and the scented candles, and proceeds to gently lose money for another year.”

— T. Kingfisher

25. “I am a lawyer and a priest,” said Zale. “There is probably someone on earth more bound to confidentiality, but I have yet to meet them.”

— T. Kingfisher

26. “His last relationship had ended less than a month ago. Given that the Bishop Beartongue, highest ranked of the priests of the Temple of the White Rat in Archenhold, had nearly run him into the ground, he’d been looking forward to a few months of celibacy to recuperate. The bishop was a marvelous woman, but she had a great many aggressions to work out and limited free time to do it in.”

— T. Kingfisher

27. “The perfect gentle knight. She had a strong urge to kick him in the shins. Which would do precisely nothing and he’d look confused at me. And then probably offer to take his shin armor off so I could try again without hurting my foot.”

— T. Kingfisher

28. “Mules were worse. Mules were like horses who could plan.”

— T. Kingfisher

29. “Oh, come on, if your friends aren’t willing to strangle you, what kind of friends are they?”

— T. Kingfisher

30. “It was hard to be frightened of the unknown when the unknown kept chickens.”

— T. Kingfisher

31. “But I understood wanting to go home. I had been trapped on the other side of the hole, in an alien world, and I would have sold my hope of heaven to go home again.”

— T. Kingfisher

32. “She wondered if the outside crows hated the crows of the blistered land the way that the villagers outside hated the people inside.”

— T. Kingfisher

33. “Headache is always preferable to heartache, and if you’re focusing on not throwing up, you aren’t thinking about how the friends of your youth are dying around you.”

— T. Kingfisher

34. “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

35. “Some people just want the apocalypse in their lifetime.”

— T. Kingfisher

36. “I am the servant of the sword,” he said. “I obey the will of the – great god, woman, put on some clothes!”

— T. Kingfisher

37. “Everybody makes up a story about their sins. Sometimes to make them less, sometimes to make them the worst thing a mortal’s ever done.”

— T. Kingfisher

38. “The thing that no one warned you about insanity was how incredibly tedious it was. You were always having to explain yourself and apologize, over and over, and you got so tired of being crazy.”

— T. Kingfisher

39. “It is somehow easier to face things when one is not alone. Courage still does most of the heavy lifting, but Pride gets its shoulder in there, too, just to keep you from embarrassing yourself in front of the other person... or hedgehog, as the case may be.”

— T. Kingfisher

40. “Oh, relax. It’s not like the stick up his ass can get any stickier.”

— T. Kingfisher

41. “Rosa thought she might be getting a headache. Maybe it was because she was rolling her eyes so hard.”

— T. Kingfisher

42. “There could not be a manor house. There had never been a manor house anywhere near Lostfarthing. Nobles did not come to Lostfarthing. It was not possible for a noble to disgrace themselves badly enough to be exiled this far east. The Duke of Entwood had been convicted of black magic, cannibalism, and high treason, and while he’d been burned at the stake, his heirs had only been sent as far east as Blue Lady, which was still two day’s travel west of Skypepper.”

— T. Kingfisher

43. “White ravens aren’t really white, they’re just an absence of black. But they’re very good at it.”

— T. Kingfisher

44. “One of the grimmer realizations of Sarkis’s youth had been the discovery that knowing you were being an ass did not actually stop you from continuing to be an ass.”

— T. Kingfisher

45. “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

46. “This is normal, I told myself. This is totally normal. The world completely turned upside down and you were scared and you had to be competent and not freak out. Now you can freak out again and it’s just taking a while to all break loose. You’re fine. This is normal.”

— T. Kingfisher

47. “I bet real pirates don’t worry about lint. They worry about other things, like privateers and scurvy.”

— T. Kingfisher

48. “Someone seemed to be drinking Caliban’s beer at a shocking rate. He wasn’t sure why, since it did not improve at all upon repeated exposure.”

— T. Kingfisher

49. “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

50. “Look, if it’s gonna come to life and take a chunk out of me, I’d rather it did now than when my back was turned.” There was a certain logic to this position. The dead twisted one did not take a chunk out of her, despite several solid pokes with the stick. I think Foxy might have been slightly disappointed.”

— T. Kingfisher