Top 300 T. Kingfisher Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Then again, few humans were truly worth the love of a living dog. Some gifts you could never deserve.”

— T. Kingfisher

152. “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

153. “She engaged in a few moments of recreational xenophobia, which didn’t help at all but did pass the time.”

— T. Kingfisher

154. “You never forget some things,” said Bryony. Three deportment teachers had nearly broken themselves training those things into her, and one had actually quit and gone into the seminary afterwards.”

— T. Kingfisher

155. “If dogs had religion, Satan would be the UPS guy.”

— T. Kingfisher

156. “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

157. “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

158. “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

159. “The rabbit flicked its ears, looked up at Brenner, and said, in a deep, thoughtful voice, “You’ll die laughing, you know.”

— T. Kingfisher

160. “He took another swallow, vaguely hoping that sobriety would lie at the bottom of the glass.”

— T. Kingfisher

161. “Also, you stabbed her. Stabbed. Pointy metal jammed into flesh. Women do not forgive you for that in a hurry. Men either, generally.”

— T. Kingfisher

162. “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

163. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

166. “Evil, Roderick had said. But it wasn’t evil that I was seeing here. It was alien, a monstrous alienness so far removed from what I understood that every fiber of my being screamed to reject it, so run, to get away.”

— T. Kingfisher

167. “But he’s mad, completely mad, and he turns his wives into golems. He needs killing, not negotiation.”

— T. Kingfisher

168. “She was used to being stubborn, but having people agree with her was off-putting and didn’t give her much to work with.”

— T. Kingfisher

169. “The problem with crying in the woods, by the side of a white road that leads somewhere terrible, is that the reason for crying isn’t inside your head. You have a perfectly legitimate and pressing reason for crying, and it will still be there in five minutes, except that your throat will be raw and your eyes will itch and absolutely nothing else will have changed.”

— T. Kingfisher

170. “Then she smiled and it was terrible. Madeline’s lips pulled up at the corners in a terrible parody of good humor, her mouth stretching painfully wide, her jaw dropped so far that it looked almost like a scream. Above that awful grin, her eyes were as flat and dead as stones. I do not delude.”

— T. Kingfisher

171. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

173. “Gran Mae had been racist, in that Southern heavily-in-denial way, where you think watching Oprah counts as having a black friend.”

— T. Kingfisher

174. “They say you can’t go home again, but of course you can. It’s just that when you get there, somebody may have repainted and changed the fixtures around.”

— T. Kingfisher

175. “Ah. American. That explained the clothes and the way he stood with his legs wide and his elbows out, as if he had a great deal more space than was actually available.”

— T. Kingfisher

176. “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

177. “That’s one of the hardest parts of being an artist, you know – learning to be patient with yourself when you’re not as good as you want to be.”

— T. Kingfisher

178. “Rescue was bad. People who wanted you to be vulnerable and grateful tended to get very angry when you stopped being vulnerable and didn’t act grateful enough.”

— T. Kingfisher

179. “There is enough darkness in the world,” said the Herder. “We do not add to it unless we must.”

— T. Kingfisher

180. “You learned better and you got on with things. You learned that you were what you were, and tried to be the best version of that person, because you were never going to be anybody else. And you stopped envying other people because everyone had problems you didn’t know about.”

— T. Kingfisher

181. “My internet armor had been built up in the fanfic battlegrounds and was thus impenetrable, but Uncle Earl was a gentle soul, and I was afraid that someone might hurt his feelings.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

183. “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

184. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

186. “Perhaps it was a toad. Perhaps the whole world was a toad. It was no stupider than anyone else’s cosmology. Clara would leave the order of St. Ursa and found the order of St. Toad. They would sleep a lot. Yes. Sleeping seemed like a good commandment for the order. Sleep and hot tea. Yes. She was working out the various ranks and the secondary rules for St. Toad’s worship when Galen said, “There’s smoke rising ahead. We’re nearly there.”

— T. Kingfisher

187. “Don’t ask me where the cookies get the dances they do – this batch had been doing hornpipes. The last batch did waltzes, and the one before that hade performed a decidedly lewd little number that had even made Aunt Tabitha blush. A little too much spice in those, I think.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

190. “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

191. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

193. “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

194. “Bongo is an excellent watchdog, by which I mean that he will watch very alertly as the serial killer breaks into the house and skins me.”

— T. Kingfisher

195. “Oh gods, if any of you are listening, please grant that we don’t make things worse.”

— T. Kingfisher

196. “There was a brief silence while we all tried to recover from Foxy’s metaphor.”

— T. Kingfisher

197. “All you had were pigs and enthusiasm. It’s not your fault.”

— T. Kingfisher

198. “We had passed close in space, but separated by far too much time to make a difference.”

— T. Kingfisher

199. “There is a person in this world who feels safe in my arms. It felt like grace.”

— T. Kingfisher

200. “Besides, what do you have to offer any woman? “I will make sure you always have warm socks,” is not a line to set anyone’s heart aglow.”

— T. Kingfisher