Top 200 Tamsyn Muir Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “You don’t have to read these. Put your thumb over them if you like.”

— Tamsyn Muir

152. “Anyone can learn to fight. Hardly anyone learns to think.”

— Tamsyn Muir

153. “Once you turn your back on something, you have no more right to act as though you own it.”

— Tamsyn Muir

154. “The nuns tried their best, but a few minutes later it was confirmed that one of the hermits had died of shock, and everyone around him celebrated his sacred good fortune.”

— Tamsyn Muir

155. “Gideon slid her glasses back onto her face, obscuring feelings with tint.”

— Tamsyn Muir

156. “Blessed Sister Lachrimorta and Blessed Sister Aisamorta were unaltered. They were still tiny, their faces still tight, grey-painted dribbles, and as the Ninth was free from miracles, they were still blind.”

— Tamsyn Muir

157. “I guess I might as well die,” he concluded, something he now suggested hopefully at least three times a day.”

— Tamsyn Muir

158. “A blood ward is for those without imagination.”

— Tamsyn Muir

159. “Fear doesn’t help us achieve a state of grace; it deafens the heart.”

— Tamsyn Muir

160. “Harrow, I can’t keep my promise, because the entire point of me is you. You get that, right? That’s what cavaliers sign up for. There is no me without you. One flesh, one end.”

— Tamsyn Muir

161. “Paul, practical, clasped one of her hands between them, and used the other to rub a rough section of black frieze over her sides to try to warm her up. “Okay. Don’t worry,” they said. Nona felt hot and cross. “I’ve just told you why I’m worried, in detail, and I think that matters quite a lot.”

— Tamsyn Muir

162. “Once Gideon had stopped laughing, leaning against the icy pillar and beating on it with her fist, she had to breathe long and hard in order to not crack up again.”

— Tamsyn Muir

163. “If they want to make you into a bad wizard, be a bad wizard. We can write the history books to say you were a good wizard. Or at least an okay wizard.”

— Tamsyn Muir

164. “He said: When they called me up and said the cryo project was over she looked at me and she just said, There they go, John.”

— Tamsyn Muir

165. “Even in the long dark days she spent wholly alone – in the libraries, or in her laboratory, fingers burnt from handling fatty ashes – she would hear voices just out of her hearing, or see things in her periphery that were not there. It seemed to her that sometimes her hands would grasp her own throat and press up against her windpipe until she saw spots in her vision. She would see dangling ropes; she would forget where she was and wipe out a whole morning’s scholarship with false memory.”

— Tamsyn Muir

166. “It’s a horrible thing to fall out of sight.”

— Tamsyn Muir

167. “Today isn’t the day when we start to use one another’s bodies. Or tomorrow, or ever. We’re not barbarians.”

— Tamsyn Muir

168. “But have a go. Surprise me. My body is ready.”

— Tamsyn Muir

169. “Harrow, if you bother to remember anything from my ramblings, please remember this: once you turn your back on something, you have no more right to act as though you own it.”

— Tamsyn Muir

170. “IN THE DREAM, he told her the words about where he took his degrees, his postdoc, his research fellowship.”

— Tamsyn Muir

171. “If you don’t, it’s fine, nobody cares, it’s a random name in a novel about bonermancy.”

— Tamsyn Muir

172. “It is a drawing of the letter S” said the deep, solemn voice from over her shoulder, and she realized she had stopped midstride. “The letter in question is constructed from six short marks stacked vertically three by three. There are two triangles on the top and bottom. which, along with some diagonal strokes, form a calligraphic S.”

— Tamsyn Muir

173. “Crown was really very nearly pretty enough for Camilla.”

— Tamsyn Muir

174. “Hail to the Lady of the Ninth House,” warbled a voice delightedly, bringing the count of people who had ever been happy to see Harrow up to three.”

— Tamsyn Muir

175. “If any of the other Houses knew of what we’d done they would destroy us from orbit without a second’s thought.”

— Tamsyn Muir

176. “The message has two parts left, and you are looking at one of those parts. The name for this part of the message was ‘Aim’ when the message was passed to us through my forebear Emma Sen.”

— Tamsyn Muir

177. “Gideon was lolling behind Harrow, picking at her fingernails and staring at the pieces of paper, which had handwriting that was more like cryptography.”

— Tamsyn Muir

178. “Nona leant into her and said, “Thanks. I love you too, Camilla,” and: “Do you know who I am yet?”

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

180. “Don’t worry, kiddie, she said tiredly. I’ll keep loving you – my problem is I don’t know how to stop.”

— Tamsyn Muir

181. “A head start,” said her necromancer, “is the only advantage one can claim by choice.”

— Tamsyn Muir

182. “They only intervened if it looked like you might choke to death on your own vomit, a mercy that you always vaguely thought a shame.”

— Tamsyn Muir

183. “Come on, love. Guys as careful as me don’t have accidents.”

— Tamsyn Muir

184. “The skeletons aren’t reanimations, Ninth, they’re revenants: ghosts inhabiting a physical shell.”

— Tamsyn Muir

185. “A Tupperware container is only as good as it’s lid.”

— Tamsyn Muir

186. “The Master Warden found the idea of dying inconvenient.”

— Tamsyn Muir

187. “I find the idea comforting... that thousands of years after you’re gone... is when you really live. That your echo is louder than your voice.”

— Tamsyn Muir

188. “We’re all in this together,’ she said, which was a typically Fifth assumption. The Ninth didn’t think anyone was in anything together, or, if they were, they all had to disperse as soon as humanly possible to avoid splash damage.”

— Tamsyn Muir

189. “You’re not waiting for her resurrection; you’ve made yourself her mausoleum.”

— Tamsyn Muir

190. “So what is the training, then – how to attain Lyctorhood?” The little priest looked at them again. “Well, I don’t know,” he said.”

— Tamsyn Muir

191. “Nona had kept giggling, and that got her told off because Harrowhark Nonagesimus didn’t giggle.”

— Tamsyn Muir

192. “Bones are mediocre.”

— Tamsyn Muir

193. “They held out a lavender silk handkerchief.”

— Tamsyn Muir

194. “A tableau of magicians and their guardians revolved around the corpses.”

— Tamsyn Muir

195. “Her going full atria was perfectly over-the-top. The crew on your horrible flagships are always trying to martyr themselves whenever you so much as ask for an orange juice.”

— Tamsyn Muir

196. “But maybe we shouldn’t,” she said, holding the eyelids to that little slit-watching the widening white crack, watching the river water pound it into the place where it wanted to be even if the River itself didn’t. “If we end here, it’ll be just like... a bad dream, won’t it? And maybe we’ll wake up somewhere else. I know we won’t,” she explained, “but we don’t have to know that... maybe if we all go, it’ll be quick.”

— Tamsyn Muir

197. “Gideon rolled her eyes so hard that she felt in danger of twisting the optic nerve.”

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

199. “You cut up an onion, burn it at the bottom of the pot, put in a few vegetables, and then some meat. It won’t taste like anything, so put in a few teaspoons of salt, and then it’ll taste like a few teaspoons of salt.”

— Tamsyn Muir

200. “Your only settings were power-vomit and murder.”

— Tamsyn Muir