Top 300 T. Kingfisher Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “She should at least keep chickens,” said the dust-wife. “Or take up gardening. Immortality is wretched, but you can always make the best of it.”

— T. Kingfisher

152. “So much for prayer, then. What was the point of saints that wouldn’t kick someone off a horse when you asked them to?”

— T. Kingfisher

153. “Granted, she hadn’t known Stephen that long, but if you couldn’t bond over multiple corpses, what could you bond over?”

— T. Kingfisher

154. “Marra knew all these things. They did not shake the gnawing dread that had lodged itself under her breastbone. She felt as if the dread must be visible to other people, like a growth, and it seemed strange that no one ever commented on it.”

— T. Kingfisher

155. “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

156. “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

157. “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

158. “Bryony began laughing, with a great deal of bitterness to be sure, but still, laughter. That had always been her great gift and her besetting sin, that even in the darkest and most somber times, she had the urge to laugh.”

— T. Kingfisher

159. “Time suddenly seemed physically present, rushing past her like air through the tunnels.”

— T. Kingfisher

160. “That had always been her great gift and her besetting sin, that even in the darkest and most somber times, she had the urge to laugh.”

— T. Kingfisher

161. “Was someone about to cut her head off? True, he was a bit far afield of Weaver’s Nest, but it wasn’t as if the sort of people who chopped off other people’s heads obeyed strict neighborhood boundaries.”

— T. Kingfisher

162. “That should do it. Tell me if you get the urge to take a bite out of someone, though.” “There’s a long list of people I’d like to bite,” said Marra, a bit dryly. The dust-wife snorted. “Fair enough. Just tell me if you get the urge to chew afterward, then.”

— T. Kingfisher

163. “Don’t stare,′ murmured the dust-wife, ’but don’t look away if someone looks at you. Show as little weakness as you can. Agree to nothing and accept nothing until you know the price.”

— T. Kingfisher

164. “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

165. “The first person we’d met and I wanted to get the hell away as quickly as I could. Typical.”

— T. Kingfisher

166. “Why do gods always want you to walk to them? You’d think they’d do more good if they were near where most of the people live.”

— T. Kingfisher

167. “Still, I have to admit I didn’t see the chicken or the puppet coming.”

— T. Kingfisher

168. “Strange, the powers you find sometimes, in a garden at the end of the road.”

— T. Kingfisher

169. “I asked my phone if it was connected to the internet and it told me that it had a very close relationship with the internet. I attempted to pull up a web page and it informed me that it was not that kind of relationship.”

— T. Kingfisher

170. “Summer’s mother believed that books were safe things that kept you inside, which only shows how little she knew about it, because books are one of the least safe things in the world.”

— T. Kingfisher

171. “I am not spending twenty dollars on a candle,” said my mother. Phil pulled her to her feet. She was clearly favoring her ankle and had to lean on his arm. “For twenty dollars, it would have to give me an orgasm every time I lit it.” Phil made a small sound of emotional distress.”

— T. Kingfisher

172. “They pretended they weren’t there as guards and Nessilka pretended her goblins weren’t being guarded, and everyone was reasonably happy.”

— T. Kingfisher

173. “How dare he tell me about his awful past at a particularly relevant moment? The nerve of the man!”

— T. Kingfisher

174. “I didn’t have that many boxes. Most of them were books. I have always been one of those who rhapsodized about the book as a physical object, but having to pack and carry the boxes was enough to make me want to throw over physical books altogether and just live on an e-reader.”

— T. Kingfisher

175. “The room she found herself in, when they had tied her to yet another chair and removed the sack, was larger than the last one. It was also clean, but in the fashion of a room that can be easily sluiced down to get the bloodstains off the walls. That was a happy thought. I’m so glad I had it.”

— T. Kingfisher

176. “Shovels were good for burying dead bodies, and also for making bodies dead in the first place.”

— T. Kingfisher

177. “Magic never seemed to be much use at doing the things you wanted done in a reasonable time frame.”

— T. Kingfisher

178. “Rage was only useful if you were allowed to do anything with it.”

— T. Kingfisher

179. “Sorry, guys. We’re not all tragic heroes. Some of us are just tragic.”

— T. Kingfisher

180. “I don’t know why I’m second-guessing Crevan’s sanity – I’m sitting here talking to a hedgehog mime.”

— T. Kingfisher

181. “They looked like the dreams of trees cast in bronze.”

— T. Kingfisher

182. “It was not a terribly good stab. Millers’ daughters do not traditionally spend a great deal of time engaged in single combat.”

— T. Kingfisher

183. “It was still white, and it still glowed under the moon, and the cobbles were still as rounded as old skulls, and the leaves still looked like splashes of blood across the stones, but Rhea felt better. She was still going somewhere terrible, but she had a hedgehog, dammit.”

— T. Kingfisher

184. “Well, he’s a dog. They don’t have an idea how the world’s supposed to be, so it doesn’t bother them when it isn’t.” Agnes frowned. “Except herding dogs, I think. They have a pretty clear idea in their heads, so they’re always nipping and worrying and trying to get it to fit. Of course, there’s people like that, too.” “A great many of them,” rumbled Fenris. “They are either excellent organizers or terrible zealots. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of middle ground.”

— T. Kingfisher

185. “The carver had clearly heard of the golden ratio and wanted no truck with it.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

187. “I am delighted by obscure passions, no matter how unusual. During the war, I was once holed up in a shepherd’s cottage, listening for the enemy to come up the hillside, when the shepherd launched into an impassioned diatribe on the finer points of sheep breeding that rivaled any sermon I have ever heard in my life. By the end, I was nodding along and willing to launch a crusade against all weak, overbred flocks, prone to scours and fly-strike, crowding out the honest sheep of the world.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

189. “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

190. “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

191. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

193. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

195. “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

196. “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

197. “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

198. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

200. “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