Top 300 T. Kingfisher Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Dead men are much less trouble.”

— T. Kingfisher

202. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

204. “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

205. “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

206. “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

207. “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

208. “She had apparently decided that Marra could be withdrawn from the game of merchants and princes and safety set aside.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

209. “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

210. “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

211. “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

212. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

214. “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

215. “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

216. “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

217. “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

218. “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

219. “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

220. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

222. “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

223. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

225. “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

226. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

228. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

230. “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

231. “The trees were full of crows and the woods were full of madmen.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

233. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

235. “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

236. “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

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

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

239. “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

240. “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

241. “In the course of all that wandering around losing fights, we developed our own language, Gallacian. I am told it is worse than Finnish, which is impressive.”

— T. Kingfisher

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

— T. Kingfisher

243. “When she is not writing, she is probably out in the garden, trying to make eye contact with butterflies.”

— T. Kingfisher

244. “No matter how pale and pure and perfect you are, the moon is even more perfect.”

— T. Kingfisher

245. “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

246. “You have been released to the Temple for discipline, you are forbidden from carrying arms in the presence of the Archon for a year and a day, Judge Guicciard wants a personal apology, and I am supposed to dock your pay to cover the statue, but since I don’t actually pay you, we’ll just let that bit pass.” She waved a hand. “Consider yourself disciplined. No dessert for a week. Etc.”

— T. Kingfisher

247. “And then, of course, there are the other sort. They ask questions, but what they really want to know is what’s in your pants and, by extension, who’s in your bed.”

— T. Kingfisher

248. “Summer had never had a father, and wasn’t entirely sure what you did with one.”

— T. Kingfisher

249. “What options did an angry butterfly have, anyway? Stamping eyelash-sized feet? Flapping its wings in a sarcastic manner? In.”

— T. Kingfisher

250. “Also, the wizard’s response to having a skeletal deer leap in front of him and a bruised and whimpering elf fall off its back was to say, “Oh.” That.”

— T. Kingfisher