Top 200 Tamsyn Muir Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “You don’t have to read these. Put your thumb over them if you like.”

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

205. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

208. “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

209. “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

210. “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

211. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

215. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

218. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

220. “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

221. “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

222. “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

223. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

225. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

229. “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

230. “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

231. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

235. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

238. “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

239. “Evidence,” he said, “outweighs testimony.”

— Tamsyn Muir

240. “She had long since ascended to the rank of double douchebag.”

— Tamsyn Muir

241. “Which just goes to show that only getting to NCEA Level 2 isn’t going to stop you making waves in life, right. You can still eat steak, talk to wizards, and take down the government.”

— Tamsyn Muir

242. “In a way, it helped. Nothing added to your resolution to live so much as someone else suggesting that you die.”

— Tamsyn Muir

243. “You’re a smart girl, Harrowhark. You might turn some of that brain to the toughest lesson: that of grief.”

— Tamsyn Muir

244. “The blood all drained away from Gideon’s cheeks for some reason. The world spun off its axis. Bright spots sparked in her vision. She found herself saying, intelligently, “Mmf.”

— Tamsyn Muir

245. “She stood next to a skeleton whose arms were so full with bits of bone and lengths of tibia that it trailed chips like breadcrumbs. It was easy enough to stand beside it politely until the door opened, then to trip it up, then to step over it. She unsheathed her rapier with a silver whisper, slipping the knuckles of her left hand through the obsidian bands.”

— Tamsyn Muir

246. “Honesty, this is a matter of life.” The chain rattled and the door hesitated. “You’re s’posed to say ‘and death,’” he supplied. “I have started to not believe in the other one,” said Nona. “It’s stupid saying ‘and death’ when most of the people who die get up and walk around again. Maybe if I said ’a matter of life and double death.”

— Tamsyn Muir

247. “Please help me give them those reasons. We are done here. Let us all go to the bathroom. Dismissed, Ctesiphon-3, Troia cell.”

— Tamsyn Muir