Top 300 T. Kingfisher Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “I’m a freelance editor. I turn decent books into decently readable books and hopeless books into hopeless books with better grammar.”

— T. Kingfisher

152. “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

153. “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

154. “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

155. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

158. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

160. “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

161. “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

162. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

164. “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

165. “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

166. “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

167. “Doctor Piper dealt with corpses and for the most part, he preferred them to the living. He didn’t mind living people, he was perfectly happy to meet them and talk to them and even work with them, but corpses never, ever asked stupid questions.”

— T. Kingfisher

168. “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

169. “Caliban had a brief, vivid memory of one of the older nuns saying: “Maybe their god could use one of those arms to pull his followers’ heads out of their own asses!”

— T. Kingfisher

170. “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

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. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

174. “Smart goblins became mechanics. Dumb goblins became soldiers. Really dumb goblins became officers.”

— T. Kingfisher

175. “I could hop into an ER carrying my severed leg and squirting blood from the stump and the doctor would congratulate me on having dropped all that leg weight and tell me to keep up the good work.”

— T. Kingfisher

176. “I no longer have a church to serve, so I will swear to you, instead.”

— T. Kingfisher

177. “It was too quiet all evening. I ate cold pizza and drank too much wine. The box said that I should pair it with chimichurri sauce and salsa dancing. The box was going to get British murder shows and like it.”

— T. Kingfisher

178. “I suspect if I had owned a border collie, this story would have a very different ending, and I probably would not have been around to type it up. But I had Bongo, and he saved our lives because he is simple and made of nose.”

— T. Kingfisher

179. “Normal people flirt. I think. Apparently we just exchange terrible life stories.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

181. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

184. “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

185. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

187. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

191. “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

192. “Panic was definitely called for right now, but for some reason, if there’s two people, only one of you panics at a time.”

— T. Kingfisher

193. “If we limited loving to just the sane, undamaged people, the next generation would have about three people in it and presumably humanity would die out shortly afterward.”

— T. Kingfisher

194. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

196. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

198. “She’d have been thrilled if he’d vanished. She’d have decided that he ran away to spite her, probably with another woman. She’d have milked that so hard that she’d have lived another thirty years on pure hate.”

— T. Kingfisher

199. “Rage shivered through her, a rage that seemed like it could topple the halls of heaven, then vanished under the knowledge of her own helplessness. Rage was only useful if you were allowed to do anything with it.”

— T. Kingfisher

200. “The Good Lord looks out for fools. In your case, apparently He sends the occasional Englishwoman.”

— T. Kingfisher