Ursula Vernon Quotes & Sayings

She was a good witch and a decent person, but decent people aren't always easy to live with. — Ursula Vernon

Every now and again, a painting will get away from my control and take over. Sometimes it's a good thing. Sometimes it's a giant drooling hairy thing with pointy teeth. You know how it is. — Ursula Vernon

You're brave and not very bright, which is the key to success. — Ursula Vernon

Air and Water can just swirl around being swirly, and Fire is just kind of aggressive, but my gut feeling is that Earth needs to work for a living. Earth has stuff to be doing. Earth is busy. Earth is solid and responsible and works hard. Earth is reliable. Earth is the designated driver of the elements and will always come over and feed the cat when you're out of town. — Ursula Vernon

I don't know why people don't paint more warthogs. Warthogs are fantastic. They have the most marvelous faces, like cracked mud with tusks. And the eyelashes! Like many otherwise hideous animals, they have truly spectacular eyelashes. But nooo, it's always the charismatic mammals, like foxes and wolves and tigers. Have you ever smelled a fox? Believe me, the warthog produces a light, airy fragrance suitable for the home or office compared to a fox. Um. What was I saying again? — Ursula Vernon

Okay. Morality in a nutshell. Don't hurt people if you can avoid it. Don't steal stuff unless you're starving or it's really, really important. Work hard. Pay your bills. Try to help others. Always double-check your math if there are explosives involved. If you screwed it up, you need to see it gets fixed. And don't eat anything that talks. If it doesn't fall under one of those categories, just do the best you can. — Ursula Vernon

I am automatically suspicious of things that wave their symbolism around and do little dances and bludgeon you over the head so that you [Darn] Well Know There's A Symbol Here. — Ursula Vernon

The minute I sit down and think 'Okay, this must be KID SAFE!' my Muse develops Tourrette's and goes to lunch with Clive Barker, and my mind plunges into the gutter and I draw an appalling blank on anything that is not violent, gory, profanity laden, or depraved. So I think the only way I can ever do kid's books if I plan not to do kid's books. If that makes any sense. — Ursula Vernon

Maps? There are no maps.
I go by dark ways, unclean ways. If such a map existed, it would be beyond price. Nameless cults would battle in the low places of the earth for such a price. Dreamers would starve themselves in endless visions seeking its location.
Such a map would have to be drawn on the skin of a black he-goat, in virgin's blood, with a brush made of dragon's eyelashes. The cartographer would go mad, and it would profane the hands that touched it. — Ursula Vernon

Wilbur looked at the list glumly. "Are you sure you need all this stuff?"
"Yep."
"The ax?"
"The ax is critical."
"The chalk?"
"The chalk is super-critical."
"The bungee cords?"
"Bungee cords are the single most useful object in the universe, Wilbur. People may say it's duct tape, but it's actually bungee cords. All great heroes know this. — Ursula Vernon

Dragons have been known to have staring contests with mountains. They usually win. — Ursula Vernon

And that's how Snuggles the hamster learned that yes, things COULD always get worse. — Ursula Vernon

Trolls have a longstanding animosity for goats
"Who's that trip-tapping across my bridge!?"
and this led me to think that perhaps trolls are related to goats, since it seems a lot more plausible to me that your relatives would make you insane than some random hooved mammal, however ecologically destructive it might be. What if trolls evolved from goats? Or, no, better yet, what if goats evolved from trolls? Or were domesticated from trolls by human shepherds? And the trolls despise their domesticated cousins as a disgrace to the once-proud troll race, (much as I assume wolves would despise Chihuahuas if they ever gave them much thought) and eat them at every opportunity. — Ursula Vernon

If I may bend your ear for a moment, I like Terry Pratchett. I like footnotes. I like footnotes even when they are not as entertaining as a Pratchett footnote, even when they are in the middle of a book on evolutionary biology and briefly explain the Red Queen hypothesis or the fate of the Stephen's Island Wren or how many bunnies can dance on the back of Australia. Footnotes fill me with a very mild glee. The endnote simply does not compare. — Ursula Vernon

Let's take a minute to talk about spellbooks, since, in this day and age when magic is no longer taught in schools (or is, at best, an elective like Home Economics), very few people have the experience with spellbooks that they used to. — Ursula Vernon

He was tall and slim and had dark hair and young women found him fascinating.

This sort of thing happens often enough, even with boys as mortal as dirt. There's always one who learned how to brood early and often, and always girls who think they can heal him.

Eventually the girls learn better. Either the hurts are petty little things and they get tired of whining or the hurt's so deep and wide that they drown in it. The smart ones heave themselves back to shore and the slower ones wake up married with a husband who lies around and suffers in their direction. It's part of a dance as old as the jackalopes themselves. — Ursula Vernon

If I do manage to come up with a scheme [to naming], however, I stick to it, which is why my cats are named after gods-Loki and Athena, who are, respectively, absolutely straightforward and affectionate, and dumber than dirt. I learned my lesson. I will name my next cat 'Satan' or 'Marduk' or something, thereby ensuring a kind, gentle beast who treats my upholstery like a shrine. — Ursula Vernon

It's a reality of art that the fewer lines you get, the harder it is. Cartooning is actually harder than realism. You have less to work with. It's like trying to build a house-if you have unlimited resources, you're in much better shape than if you get two bricks, a hammer, and a bent nail. — Ursula Vernon

There is something about a bathroom that feels like a fortress. A closed bathroom door may only be about two inches of plywood, but it feels like an iron bar. — Ursula Vernon

So we have this eyesore on the property.
No, it's not the beagle. I can understand why you'd think that, though. — Ursula Vernon

I don't always burn my bridges, but when I do, I like there to be no survivors. — Ursula Vernon

Once upon a time, there was a little creature that was rather small and rather wicked and it lived all alone in the woods.
The little creature lived in a little den, at the bottom of a little ravine, filled with not-at-all little brambles and on the edge of a forest that could only be described as really freakin' huge. — Ursula Vernon

Grandma Harken was sharpening her garden shears. Her hands slowed on the file and she said finally, "He'll get in trouble and he'll figure it out. Best to do it without us standing over him. It's the only way anybody ever learns to clean up after themselves. — Ursula Vernon

I suppose we should contact the local authorities?" said Wilbur.
"I'm a princess," said Harriet. "We're in the hamster kingdom. I kinda am the authorities."
"Yeah, but you're more a hitting-things-with-a-sword princess than a rehabilitating-villains princess."
"Being hit with a sword can be very rehabilitating, under the right circumstances. — Ursula Vernon

Once upon a time there was a girl who discovered that if she played a certain tune on a jade flute, she could summon up jade gnomes, a peculiar, harmless, but rather creepy looking spirit of the underground. The fact is that many of us have talents like this, but generally never discover them due to lack of opportunity, since one can go one's entire life without playing a jade flute, or discovering that one can speak the language of ground sloths, or turning fruitcake into solid tungsten by singing Sinatra tunes to it under a quarter moon. — Ursula Vernon

The last time Wendell's mother had caught them playing cowboys and Indians, she'd read them a twenty-minute lecture on the history of Native American oppression, which had really put a damper on things. It was hard to have a thrilling shoot-out while yelling: 'I respect your position and hope that we can come to a mutually respectful conclusion! — Ursula Vernon

Temper is itself an obstacle. — Ursula Vernon

I love boats. Boats are great. You can get all kinds of places and meet all kinds of interesting people, and you never know if they're going to try to eat you or worship you. — Ursula Vernon

I really wish there had been a way to phrase this as 'A thunder of worms.' Because I like that phrase. That's a phrase with soul. Worm thunder on the horizon, all is right with the cosmos ... — Ursula Vernon

I hate prophesies! All they're good for is an extra club to beat yourself up with after the fact. — Ursula Vernon