Top 200 Tamsyn Muir Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Ortus would never rhyme melancholy with my mortal folly again.”

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

203. “Everything in that room was beautiful, and all had gone to seed. It wasn’t like back in the Ninth where unbeautiful things were now old and ruined to boot – the Ninth must have always been a corpse, and corpses putrefied. The House of the First had been abandoned, and breathlessly waited to be used by someone other than time.”

— Tamsyn Muir

204. “While we were developing common sense, she studied the blade.”

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

206. “Harrow’s face was bright with elation and fervour. Gideon would have sworn there were tears in her eyes, except that no such liquid existed: Harrow was a desiccated mummy of hate.”

— Tamsyn Muir

207. “She had found a nasty, forbidden little book in the great Ninth repositories of nasty, forbidden little books, and all the Houses would have had a collective aneurysm if they knew she’d even read it.”

— Tamsyn Muir

208. “The violet of her eyes was dried-up flowers; her mouth was the colour and softness of rocks.”

— Tamsyn Muir

209. “The most she could hope for was Swords, Swords II, and maybe Swords III. “We ask,” began Teacher, “that you never open a locked door unless you have permission.”

— Tamsyn Muir

210. “Gideon had never had the opportunity to study Camilla’s two short swords before: they were more like very long daggers, slightly curved at each end, wholly utilitarian. They glittered clean and hot beneath the soggy light of the kitchen; she marched back toward the door to the dining hall.”

— Tamsyn Muir

211. “When it kicks off, nobody will be yelling anything.”

— Tamsyn Muir

212. “The congregation muttered, mostly reproachful, and Gideon started to perk up. It wasn’t quite the worst day of her life now. This was some A-grade entertainment.”

— Tamsyn Muir

213. “My body is ready.”

— Tamsyn Muir

214. “The worst part about trying to make good a sin is that it does not make the sin any less ugly.”

— Tamsyn Muir

215. “They all agreed that whatever made Nona happy at school made Nona happy at school, but the bottom line remained that she shouldn’t buy anybody drugs.”

— Tamsyn Muir

216. “Not even one of the Emperor’s fists and gestures could give Harrowhark Nonagesimus a sexy makeover. Sometimes I think you look like a twig’s funeral.”

— Tamsyn Muir

217. “But what was Teacher the mould for? Griddle, at the first sign of trouble – ” “Run like hell,” said Gideon. “I was going to say, Hit it with your sword,” said Harrow.”

— Tamsyn Muir

218. “As for your instruction here, this is what the First House asks of you.” The room drew breath together – or at least, all the necromancers did, alongside a goodly proportion of their cavaliers. Harrow’s knuckles whitened. Gideon wished that she could flop into a seat or take a sly nap. Everybody was poised in readiness for the outlined syllabus, and scholarship made her want to die.”

— Tamsyn Muir

219. “But now this benighted vision stood before its natural predator, the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House.”

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

221. “Through a window somewhere high up, the sunbeams poured down dust in golden torrents.”

— Tamsyn Muir

222. “You don’t have to read these. Put your thumb over them if you like.”

— Tamsyn Muir

223. “I’ve got a perfectly baseless assumption, and every scholar knows that this is where you begin.”

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

226. “Your greatest peace you found in that half-asleep, druglike state on the bed, holding your heartbeat low before the cold white stars, sick with a fury you kept forgetting existed and were corrupted by possessing. Around you, people would go back and forth, giving you the widest berth possible, ignoring you so entirely that at one point you were convinced you were dead. With that conviction, you had felt only intense relief.”

— Tamsyn Muir

227. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

229. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

233. “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

234. “She more correctly climbed down into love, picked its locks, opened its gates, and breached its inner chamber.”

— Tamsyn Muir

235. “Harrowhark smiled. This smile was unusual too: it betokened conspiracy, which was normal, except that this one invited Gideon to be part of it. Her eyes glowed like coals with sheer collusion. Gideon didn’t know if she could handle all these new expressions on Harrow: she needed a lie down.”

— Tamsyn Muir

236. “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

237. “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

238. “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

239. “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

240. “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

241. “Death first to vultures and scavangers.”

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir

245. “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

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

— Tamsyn Muir

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

— Tamsyn Muir