Top 300 T. Kingfisher Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

155. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

157. “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

158. “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

159. “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

160. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

162. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

164. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

166. “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

167. “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

168. “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

169. “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

170. “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

171. “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

172. “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

173. “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

174. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

176. “Dead men are much less trouble.”

— T. Kingfisher

177. “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

178. “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

179. “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

180. “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

181. “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

182. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

184. “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

185. “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

186. “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

187. “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

188. “Don’t stop me,” said Bryony. “I’m pulling a weed. This is amazing.”

— T. Kingfisher

189. “Granted, Piper’s dating history was not particularly extensive and he had always been terrible at pursuing other men, but he was still pretty sure that the morgue wasn’t the place where you were supposed to start.”

— T. Kingfisher

190. “Thank you. For – ′ he searched briefly for the words, ’ – giving me my death back.”

— T. Kingfisher

191. “Marra no longer had much faith in fate. She had been born a princess, which should have been lucky, but the price for never going hungry was to be caught in a struggle between people too powerful to call to justice.”

— T. Kingfisher

192. “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

193. “Nah, somebody’d notice. They already suspect you of murder, let’s not add public urination to the list.”

— T. Kingfisher

194. “The nice thing about immortality is that you have plenty of time to figure out how to get rid of it.”

— T. Kingfisher

195. “If she was half an animal, let the animal half speak for her, then. The human part was tied up with human things like self-loathing, but that did not matter. There were no words in reindeer speech for I hate myself. It was not a concept that could be thought, and so she did not bother to think it. She.”

— T. Kingfisher

196. “I stole the very shiniest words and hoarded them all up until they made something worth having.”

— T. Kingfisher

197. “Ironically I am publishing this in the midst of COVID-19, when we all started making sourdough at home and then started protesting police brutality. Suddenly a twelve year old book was actually relevant. Go figure.”

— T. Kingfisher

198. “In life, if you were careful, there were simply not that many times when you absolutely, positively, had to turn into a bear.”

— T. Kingfisher

199. “It struck Marra, watching, as an extravagance of grief. Someone wanted the world to know how sad he could afford to be.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher