Top 300 T. Kingfisher Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Was magic as primitive as trading blood and pain for hope?”

— T. Kingfisher

52. “Knitting socks was not a particularly glamorous hobby, but it filled the same mental need as the sword – careful work that held his attention and hopefully did not allow his mind to wander too far afield. Plus at the end, you got socks out of it, and no one appreciated good socks like a soldier.”

— T. Kingfisher

53. “That shouldn’t be possible. Caliban, however, took the view that when something impossible was going on, it was best to deal with it as you found it, and not stand around claiming it wasn’t happening.”

— T. Kingfisher

54. “The man in white cleared his throat. “You’re not a swan,” she said. He raised both eyebrows. “I’ve been accused of many things, but never that.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

56. “Ladies, Get you a man who can handle a portal to hell without freaking out.”

— T. Kingfisher

57. “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

58. “She had a strong urge to kiss him, and then perhaps beat him about the head and shoulders with his own sword.”

— T. Kingfisher

59. “The larger part of power was understanding the power you had over others, even if you would rather not have had that much power in the first place.”

— T. Kingfisher

60. “So their leader looks pretty dead,” said Istvhan, who was at the point where a corpse was a welcome break in the tension.”

— T. Kingfisher

61. “In all the old stories, the only thing that ever won was love. And occasionally a good sharp knife.” “I’ll.”

— T. Kingfisher

62. “It could,” acknowledged Slate, “but show me a clandestine operation without leaks, and I’ll show you one where everybody involved is dead.” “We’re a clandestine operation,” said Caliban. There was an awkward silence.”

— T. Kingfisher

63. “You’re bringing the hen?” “She’s got a demon in her,” said the dust-wife. “It’d be rude to leave her for the neighbors to deal with.”

— T. Kingfisher

64. “Fenris was a good man and maybe the weakness of being good was that evil didn’t occur to you.”

— T. Kingfisher

65. “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

66. “He wanted to dance around and laugh hysterically and howl at the moon. He wanted to kiss Slate passionately and yell to random passersby, “She probably doesn’t hate me!”

— T. Kingfisher

67. “I daresay I wasn’t like other girls harder than anyone else ever was. I was so unlike other girls that I wasn’t even like myself, except on Sundays.”

— T. Kingfisher

68. “Marra had grown up sullen, the sort of child who is always standing in exactly the wrong place so that the adults tell her to get out of the way. She was not slow, exactly, but she seemed younger than her age, and very little interested her for long.”

— T. Kingfisher

69. “Saving a single wondrous thing is better than saving the world. For one thing, it’s more achievable. The world is never content to stay saved.”

— T. Kingfisher

70. “There’s many a man who’ll not think twice to mistreat a woman but who lives in fear of a habit and a holy symbol.”

— T. Kingfisher

71. “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

72. “Perhaps Welsh fairies stole children and confiscated their vowels.”

— T. Kingfisher

73. “Gail told amusing stories about wildlife rescue and trying to bandage up an injured great blue heron. “I had to wear a welding face mask,” she said. “And if I’d had a riot shield, I’d have used it. Those beaks are like a spring-loaded javelin, and they’re never grateful.” She smiled fondly at the memory of a bird trying to put its beak through her eye.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

75. “She’s at peace now,” said Fenris. Agnes gave him an ironic glance. “She’s been at peace for centuries, I think. I still get to cry about it.”

— T. Kingfisher

76. “Thank you,” breathed Rhea. “Oh, thank you! I will never step on a slug again!” She could have sworn that the nearest slug turned its eyestalks toward her in reproach.”

— T. Kingfisher

77. “Do I trust you? thought Gerta. I barely know you and you frightened me and then you kissed me, and truth be told, that frightened me even more.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

79. “He stopped there, because if he kept talking, he had to ask a fourteen-year-old girl to come to the front lines of a battle, and he hated it and he knew he had to do it, and I knew I had to come because somebody had to tell the golems what to do. This is a lot to not actually say.”

— T. Kingfisher

80. “The flat stones made for uneven footing. She set her feet carefully. If she had to run, she would risk breaking an ankle or worse. They rattled and slid underfoot, talking to each other in stone language, saying all the words they had been saving up until the next time a human walked across them.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

82. “I’m suggesting that if you’re going to bring hell down upon someone’s head, you should dress for the occasion.”

— T. Kingfisher

83. “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

84. “Everyone have their souls still? Shadows still attached? Then let’s go before that changes.”

— T. Kingfisher

85. “The miller back home was like that,′ she said. ‘He had a little bit of power and he lorded it over everyone. Although there’s less damage you can do with a mill than with a religious order.”

— T. Kingfisher

86. “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

87. “Do you think I don’t know how to act around thieves and ruffians?” “The fact that you even use a word like ‘ruffians’ is not filling me with confidence, no.”

— T. Kingfisher

88. “Evil magic could flow through her like a river in full flood. Fortunately for the rest of us, there’s a lot of Agnes in the way.”

— T. Kingfisher

89. “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

90. “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

91. “There was something about poverty that was a little like war. Either you had been there or you hadn’t, and it wasn’t really possible to explain it to anyone who hadn’t.”

— T. Kingfisher

92. “Unlike the mice, gremlins really were a problem. If you ground one into flour on accident, the bread had a tendency to explode in the oven, or bleed when you cut into it, or turn into a flock of starlings and tear around the cottage shrieking, and then people came around and had words with the miller, many of which had only four letters and involved hand gestures.”

— T. Kingfisher

93. “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

94. “Miss Marple is always saying that one sees so much evil in a small village. That’s how she solves all the murders. They all remind her of things she saw in her village.”

— T. Kingfisher

95. “It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job.”

— T. Kingfisher

96. “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

97. “There are few things in life as steadying as someone you have to be brave for.”

— T. Kingfisher

98. “Gentlemen,” said Beartongue, “I forbid you to smash the Archon’s decor and try to duel with it.” “Yes, your holiness.” “I’ll have you both excommunicated.” Stephen coughed. “Technically we’re not in your church, your holiness.” “Then I will have you confirmed so that I can excommunicate you even harder.”

— T. Kingfisher

99. “It was starting to get impatient. A hedgehog hopping irritably on its hind legs is a tragic sight.”

— T. Kingfisher

100. “My dear, I am certain that you can go on about how unworthy and incapable you are for hours yet, but we have very little time. Let us pretend that we have done all that and that I have nodded correctly and made the proper noises, and skip to the point where you say, “I don’t know what I can do, but I’ll try.”

— T. Kingfisher