Top 300 T. Kingfisher Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “People get hung up on happiness and joy, but fun will take you at least as far and it’s generally cheaper to obtain.”

— T. Kingfisher

102. “She did not know many beautiful animals that had sweet tempers, except perhaps butterflies. Then again, there wasn’t enough to a butterfly to properly be called a temper. That options did an angry butterfly have, anyway? Stamping eylashed-sized feet? Flapping its wings in a sarcastic manner?”

— T. Kingfisher

103. “Books on World War II appear spontaneously in any house that contains a man over a certain age. I believe that’s science.”

— T. Kingfisher

104. “He doesn’t seem to mind me taking bits to make bread, and it’s still the best sourdough in town. We just don’t tell anybody about the eating-rats thing.”

— T. Kingfisher

105. “I expect this won’t be your last set of medals, my dear. Heroism is an unfortunate habit.”

— T. Kingfisher

106. “I took my leave of Miss Potter, pausing to compliment her painting. She turned the compliment aside with a practiced air. “I’m well enough. You should see my niece Beatrix. Twice the talent, and an artist’s eye.”

— T. Kingfisher

107. “Holly had a cheerful pink face and big, twinkling blue eyes, and Bryony occasionally had to remind herself that her sister also had a mind like a handful of razors.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

109. “You never knew when you might have to cut and run. Normal people probably didn’t worry about that. Normal people probably had nice, normal lives. Grace only had her own life, and it had taught her that you took precautions because life changed too often at other people’s whims and sooner or later, everything would be taken away.”

— T. Kingfisher

110. “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

111. “Having men want to rescue you was worlds different than simply having a female friend who had your back. If she needed a body buried, the only question Marguerite would ask was, ‘How deep?”

— T. Kingfisher

112. “Very unlikely people, you know, will share confidences with each other if they think the other person understands. A prisoner who won’t tell a guard anything will thaw immediately if he’s put in a cell with another man in for the same crime. And doctors who would bite off their own tongues before showing indecision to a patient will tell another doctor about how little they know and how frightened they are. I’ve seen it happen many times. It’s how spies work.”

— T. Kingfisher

113. “Still, ecru. It’s like if you couldn’t decide on white or beige and combined the two for maximum blandness.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

115. “I looked at them for quite a long time, then I looked away and Simon didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything and we both did not say anything so loudly that the room rang with our silence.”

— T. Kingfisher

116. “The dead are there, whether you believe in them or not.”

— T. Kingfisher

117. “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

118. “I will unmake him,” said the clock wife simply. “I will pull the marrow from his bones and pour lead into the spaces left behind. I will make his dying into a place and visit it every day until the end of eternity.”

— T. Kingfisher

119. “Shame flitted briefly over Brenner’s face, but found itself in unfamiliar surroundings and didn’t settle.”

— T. Kingfisher

120. “Somehow that was cheering. Not because she wished him ill, but because there are few things in life as steadying as someone you have to be brave for.”

— T. Kingfisher

121. “I did not look at the words on the wall. If I didn’t look at them, they didn’t matter. Words are meaningless until you read them.”

— T. Kingfisher

122. “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

123. “There was little honor among thieves, but there was a great deal of practicality.”

— T. Kingfisher

124. “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

125. “She had apparently decided that Marra could be withdrawn from the game of merchants and princes and safety set aside. Marra both resented her mother for being so clear-eyed and was grateful to be free of the game, and she added this to the store of complicated things piled up beneath her heart.”

— T. Kingfisher

126. “I met a goddess.” “Well, these things happen,” said Slate. “Except, wait, no, they don’t. What the hell? Why’d you meet a goddess?”

— T. Kingfisher

127. “Oh. Yes. There would be someone, wouldn’t there? Of course there would be a person. Ask at the farmhouse did not mean that you addressed your questions to the front porch. She had not thought it through.”

— T. Kingfisher

128. “Meanwhile, Spindle was still looking at me like I was an idiot. Mind you, he did this so often that I was starting to wonder if he just had an eyelid tic or something – surely I couldn’t be that dense, could I?”

— T. Kingfisher

129. “Between one stride and the next, the herd of reindeer faded away. She felt a last few ghosts go with her, shoulder on shoulder, and then they too were gone and she was back, alone, in the world of humans and ravens.”

— T. Kingfisher

130. “No, child, you give someone an impossible task so that they won’t be able to do it.”

— T. Kingfisher

131. “Dead men are much less trouble.”

— T. Kingfisher

132. “Mom is tough. It’s easy to think that sweet people are weak, but if you look at all the stuff mom’s lived through; she’s nearly indestructable.”

— T. Kingfisher

133. “Would you like some wine, or would you prefer to yell at me for a little longer?” asked the Beast pleasantly. “I could leave, if you prefer, but I generally hold that those who leave the room when you wish to yell at them are among the most despicable of beings.”

— T. Kingfisher

134. “Ah,′ said Zultan. ‘I, too. I keep many books at my home.’ He gestured to the books in the tent. ‘These are only a few. Those I think might need on this trip, and those I have yet to read and might want, and those old friends that I cannot bear to leave behind.”

— T. Kingfisher

135. “The old woman cackled, a really good cackle, the sort that you can only get if you are over the age of eighty and know how to drink.”

— T. Kingfisher

136. “There is nothing in the world so patient as a plant awaiting spring.”

— T. Kingfisher

137. “I am Fenris,” said the man. He started to say something more, to add another name or a rank, perhaps, but cut himself short. “Fenris,” he repeated instead. “Marra.” “Fenris,” said the dust-wife. She snorted, looking over at Marra. “So you built yourself a dog and found yourself a wolf. If a fox shows up looking for you, we’ll have a proper fairy tale and I’ll start to worry.”

— T. Kingfisher

138. “She could see, in an odd way, what they were doing. It was as if the words they spoke were weaving a kind of net, a net of normalcy and propriety and sanity, around a situation that was anything but.”

— T. Kingfisher

139. “Something about his posture, and the way he kept blinking, made her think that he might be worried about crying too. Somehow that was cheering. Not because she wished him ill, but because there are few things in life as steadying as someone you have to be brave for.”

— T. Kingfisher

140. “We’re friends, by which he means he respects my talents and nobody’s paid him money to kill me.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

142. “My phone informed me that it was absolutely talking to the internet, it was happy to talk to the internet, it loved talking to the internet, then as soon as I tried to check my email, it told me it had never heard of the internet and wasn’t entirely sure it existed.”

— T. Kingfisher

143. “People were remarkably willing to dismiss their own sight. Marra thought perhaps that the world was so strange and vision so flawed that you soon realised that anything and everything could be a trick of the light.”

— T. Kingfisher

144. “I did not in fact brush Barbie’s hair. I did once attempt to mummify her, though. Mom convinced me that I did not actually have to remove Barbie’s brains with a hook through her nose, but did allow me to wrap her in toilet paper and bury her in the sandbox. In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious why I turned out the way I did.”

— T. Kingfisher

145. “You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don’t ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it.”

— T. Kingfisher

146. “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

147. “Glorious cocked an ear back at her. ‘Things act according to their natures,’ he said. ‘But sometimes our natures are complicated.”

— T. Kingfisher

148. “Stephen watched as she wrapped her arms around her torso, almost unconsciously making herself smaller. He made a mental note to find this former partner and loom over him very insistently.”

— T. Kingfisher

149. “Slate was used to, “Can we help you?” translating as, “If you make me get up, I will have you drawn and quartered.” She’d never heard it mean, “I will throw myself off a building if it will make your day better, sir.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher