Top 200 Tamsyn Muir Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Sounds like the start of a joke, right? Two scientists, an engineer, a detective, a lawyer, and an artist walk into a bar to help me become God.”

— Tamsyn Muir

52. “Always your sword, my umbral sovereign; in life, in death, in anything beyond life or death that they want to throw at thee and me. I died knowing that you’d hate me for dying; but Nonagesimus, you hating me always meant more than anyone else than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. At least I’d had your full attention.”

— Tamsyn Muir

53. “Once you’ve stepped in, said the voice in the back of her head, you’re in. This isn’t the Hokey Pokey.”

— Tamsyn Muir

54. “Camilla, we did it right, didn’t we?” Palamedes said, and now Nona knew he wasn’t speaking to anyone else in the universe. “We had something very nearly perfect... the perfect friendship, the perfect love. I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I had been allowed to experience being your adept.”

— Tamsyn Muir

55. “I understand you didn’t ask on purpose, but I like to think that there was a grain in your soul that saw yourself in need, and perhaps thought to itself, I wish I had Abigail Pent.”

— Tamsyn Muir

56. “You’ve got two scientists and an engineer and a nun and a lawyer and a banker and a cop and an artist. That’s not a defence force, that’s a cop and six different kinds of nerd.”

— Tamsyn Muir

57. “Idiot.” Harrowhark’s voice was distant and full of badly suppressed adrenaline. “Here. Take this veil.” Gideon kept mopping at her eyes. “I’m all good.” “I said put it on. I’m not having you struck blind when the door opens.” “I came prepared, my sweet.” “What are you even saying half the time –.”

— Tamsyn Muir

58. “The House of the First had been abandoned, and breathlessly waited to be used by someone other than time.”

— Tamsyn Muir

59. “In the myriadic year of Our Lord – the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death! – Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.”

— Tamsyn Muir

60. “Sextus,” she said, as though to a very stupid child, “your necromancer is wounded.”

— Tamsyn Muir

61. “My necromancer and I always liked you... and hey, what’s like except a love that hasn’t been invited indoors?”

— Tamsyn Muir

62. “And the other child said: Then perish.”

— Tamsyn Muir

63. “What a waste of a woman, to have ended her life at the bottom of a ladder.”

— Tamsyn Muir

64. “Abigail Pent has been interfered with and opened up.” “Please elaborate opened up, because my imagination is better than your description and I am not having a lot of fun here,” said Gideon.”

— Tamsyn Muir

65. “I died knowing you’d hate me for dying; but Nonagesimus, you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. At least I’d had your full attention.”

— Tamsyn Muir

66. “Love is a revenant, and it accumulates love-stuff to itself, because it is homeless otherwise.”

— Tamsyn Muir

67. “Ask me how I am and I’ll scream,” she said. “How are you,” said Camilla, who was a pill. “I see you calling my bluff and I resent it,” said Gideon.”

— Tamsyn Muir

68. “There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow – but she had died before Harrow was born.”

— Tamsyn Muir

69. “He gave the impression of being the guy fun sought out for death.”

— Tamsyn Muir

70. “Oh, this is boring,” Gideon had said in disappointment. “I wanted one with a skull puking another, smaller skull, and other skulls flying all around. But tasteful, you know?”

— Tamsyn Muir

71. “Suffice to say, all pushing, gripping, finger-inserting and pressing was in vain. It was locked as damn.”

— Tamsyn Muir

72. “Ortus wasn’t made in his mould. Coupling him to Harrow had been rather like yoking a doughnut to a cobra.”

— Tamsyn Muir

73. “He sighed and said, “We had the internet. We decided to stream.” She said, “What is this internet?” And he said, “See, I did make a utopia.”

— Tamsyn Muir

74. “He didn’t even ask me to explain. That was the kind of guy he was. He and I had grown up on the same street. I’d spotted him for mince pies all the time as kids, so stands to reason he let me cut off his arm and carried a nuke for me.”

— Tamsyn Muir

75. “Alas. I have a bad personality and a stupefying deficit of attention.”

— Tamsyn Muir

76. “She was consumed. She was the kindling for the arson taking place in her heart, her brain dry wadding for the flames, her soul so much incandescent gas. She could not do this. She absolutely and fundamentally could not do this.”

— Tamsyn Muir

77. “Why are you not appeased? That is how meat loves meat.”

— Tamsyn Muir

78. “If you think anything I did, I did to make her love me, then you don’t know anything about her and me. I’m her cavalier, dipshit! I’d kill for her! I’d die for her! I did die for her. I’d do anything she needed, anything at all, before she even knew she needed it. I’m her sword, you pasty-faced Coronabeth-looking knock-off.”

— Tamsyn Muir

79. “His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral,’ et cetera, et cetera, the word mewled fifteen pages later, the word nipple one page after that?”

— Tamsyn Muir

80. “Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die.”

— Tamsyn Muir

81. “The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House smiled, tiny and triumphant. Then she kneeled into Gideon’s arms. Gideon stumbled, sick with terror, kneeling them both down to the ground as Harrow lay like a broken rag doll. She forgot her sword, forgot everything as she cradled her used-up adept. She forgot the wrecked ligaments in her sword arm, her messed-up knee, the cups of blood she’d lost, everything but that tiny, smoldering, victorious smile.”

— Tamsyn Muir

82. “They all looked to Harrow, as though on fatal cue: legends, soldiers, poets, Magnus.”

— Tamsyn Muir

83. “The lamps made lacklustre any real light. They explosively birthed malform shadow all around.”

— Tamsyn Muir

84. “I have lots of fealty in me. I fealt the Emperor with every bone in my body. I fealt hard.”

— Tamsyn Muir

85. “I’d aim to get out of here alive, but our odds don’t look wonderful. If we stay put, we get squashed, or eaten. If we swim, we probably still get squashed or eaten.”

— Tamsyn Muir

86. “That I’m beautiful?” said Nona. “No. About the Angel. The Angel’s worried.” “Okay,” said Nona. “Stay on the grounds today,” said Hot Sauce. “When you take Noodle.”

— Tamsyn Muir

87. “I need you to hide my infirmity,” said Harrowhark. “You see, I am insane.”

— Tamsyn Muir

88. “What do Marta the Second, Naberius the Third, Jeannemary the Fourth, Magnus the Fifth, Camilla the Sixth, Protesilaus the Seventh, Colum the Eighth, and Gideon the Ninth all have in common?” You could have heard a hair flutter to the floor. Everyone stared, poker-faced, in the thick ensuing silence. Magnus looked pleased with himself. “The same middle name,” he said.”

— Tamsyn Muir

89. “Every so often she wondered if she had, in fact, kicked the bucket and this was her afterlife: wandering empty halls with a half-naked, chastened Harrowhark Nonagesimus who had no recourse but to be gentle with her, handling her as though at any moment she would explode into wet confetti giblets.”

— Tamsyn Muir

90. “I intend to take on the habit myself! Cigarettes! On a space station! What a power play.”

— Tamsyn Muir

91. “You didn’t have your original thumb and I’d touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date, but you were fine.”

— Tamsyn Muir

92. “As befits a Ninth House metre, enneameter is long, ponderous, clunky, and sucks.”

— Tamsyn Muir

93. “Love between a necromancer and cavalier is vital to differentiate them from a soldier’s love of the Emperor: they are carrying out a personal devotion that beautifies both types of adoration.”

— Tamsyn Muir

94. “So we’re talking about ghosts, and liminal spaces, and hell,” Ianthe said. Ianthe always wanted everything brought back to liminal spaces and hell, as though her rooms were not enough.”

— Tamsyn Muir

95. “It’s all right,” someone was saying, over the noise. “You’re all right. Gideon, Gideon... you’re so young. Don’t give yourself away. Do you know, it’s not worth it... none of this is worth it, at all. It’s cruel. It’s so cruel. You are so young – and vital – and alive. Gideon, you’re all right... remember this, and don’t let anyone do it to you ever again. I’m sorry. We take so much. I’m so sorry.”

— Tamsyn Muir

96. “As I’ve been told tiresomely often, a half-cocked version of something is significantly worse than not being cocked at all.”

— Tamsyn Muir

97. “Yes, well, jail for Mother,” I said.”

— Tamsyn Muir

98. “If you want to wallow in your shockingly vast reserves of self-pity, cut your throat and save me the food bill.”

— Tamsyn Muir

99. “Gideon had to stare pretty hard at skimpy nighties to get over that one.”

— Tamsyn Muir

100. “You could have lived for her... but didn’t know how.”

— Tamsyn Muir