Kingfisher Quotes & Sayings

All you had were pigs and enthusiasm. It's not your fault. — T. Kingfisher

She brutalized flour and butter, she visited wartime atrocities to milk and yeast. She committed acts of crumpet. — T. Kingfisher

Bryony closed her eyes. I am making an enchanted house sad. God help me. — T. Kingfisher

The Forester patted a log next to her. 'Come and sit, child. Tell me about your journey, and start a little before the beginning, because we are usually wrong about where things begin. — T. Kingfisher

Bryony began laughing, with a great deal of bitterness to be sure, but still, laughter. That had always been her great gift and her besetting sin, that even in the darkest and most somber times, she had the urge to laugh. — T. Kingfisher

Don't stop me," said Bryony. "I'm pulling a weed. This is amazing. — T. Kingfisher

Humans are fine if their hearts freeze. They can keep moving for years like that." — T. Kingfisher

(Potatoes were, for some reason, more prone to fits of random magic than most vegetables. It would take a remarkable magic to affect turnips or kale. No one bothered planting eggplants - they would run into the woods or fly away on leafy kites the instant your back was turned.) — T. Kingfisher

It was still white, and it still glowed under the moon, and the cobbles were still as rounded as old skulls, and the leaves still looked like splashes of blood across the stones, but Rhea felt better. She was still going somewhere terrible, but she had a hedgehog, dammit. — T. Kingfisher

You don't like pink?" "I shouldn't think anyone likes pink as much as that room does," said Bryony. — T. Kingfisher

Words are like fish and you catch them and you get to keep them forever." "And — T. Kingfisher

There were too many problems with wizards and fairies and odd things popping up in the corners of the potato field for anyone to want to invite more supernatural intervention. — T. Kingfisher

That's a guess. Only a guess, but a raven's guess is worth more than a magpie's. Aurrk!" — T. Kingfisher

There was always a slight upswing in February, the town's coldest month, when out-of-towners liked to hike into the national park to see the famous waterfalls when they rose, like bridal veils, against the mountains. But mostly, from December to April, those who made their living off tourists just suffered through, dreaming of warmer months, of kingfisher-blue skies and leaves so green they looked like they'd just been painted, as if the color would smear if you touched it. — Sarah Addison Allen

The time away from the asylum had not been kind to the old maniac. A slick lining of sunburnt skin and dirt caked his face. His smile was more crooked than ever and though he had grown a wild, wooly beard since his escape, it appeared the old maniac had shaved off his eyebrows and there was a bloody crater where his left ear once stood. — Kingfisher Pink

There are a hundred or more myths about how one might go about killing a vampire. A stake through the heart, sunlight, you've heard all the stories. Oh, and garlic. We mustn't forget garlic. Whoever came up with that silly little rumor never saw me laying the smack down at Mama Leoni's All-You-Can-Eat Trattoria. I've eaten so much garlicky clam sauce in my time that I've sweated the stuff for days on end. — Kingfisher Pink

Huh. Tastes like rat squeezins' with too much honey. — T. Kingfisher

The purple haze of the wych elms; the blue flash of a kingfisher's wings; the statuesque rightness of the milch cows in that green place chomping on the rich flood-grass. — Ronald Frame

It is somehow easier to face things when one is not alone. Courage still does most of the heavy lifting, but Pride gets its shoulder in there, too, just to keep you from embarrassing yourself in front of the other person...or hedgehog, as the case may be. — T. Kingfisher

Oh no, a human feeling awkward. How terrible. — T. Kingfisher

Saving a single wondrous thing is better than saving the world. For one thing, it's more achievable. The world is never content to stay saved. — T. Kingfisher

Summer had read a great many books about magic and animals and changing your shape. Summer's mother believed that books were safe things that kept you inside, which only shows how little she knew about it, because books are one of the least safe things in the world.) — T. Kingfisher

The rose petal floats on water. The kingfisher flashes above the pond. Life and beauty swirl in the midst of death. — Robert Jordan

Chickens, for example, were not people. You looked into a chicken's eyes and you saw the back of the chicken's eyeball. — T. Kingfisher

Can't you see I'm starving?" asked a very large man in a very loud voice. His words were clipped, desperate and breathless.

It was less a question than a demand. Less a shout than a gargle, as though the man spoke through a mouthful of gumballs and old chicken bones. His head was massive; a pregnant watermelon perched neckless atop a VW Bug. His swollen body oozed off the sides of his bed and rippled with aftershocks after each huffed syllable.

Two EMT's in ventilated hazmat suits circumnavigated the obese man like puffy yellow astronauts orbiting a small moon.

"Sir, calm down. Please. We're here to help you. — Kingfisher Pink

it was a gift to her, and gifts given freely are a bit less likely to turn bad on you. It's — T. Kingfisher

Oh. Yes. There would be someone, wouldn't there? Of course there would be a person. Ask at the farmhouse did not mean that you addressed your questions to the front porch. She had not thought it through. — T. Kingfisher

One day Turtle had savaged an innocent bowl of batter into something that almost (but not quite) resembled muffins. Her mother, who had a great deal to bear on other fronts which do not enter the scope of this story, except to say that Turtle had three older brothers, each more reprehensible than the last, opened the back door and told Turtle to take herself and her regrettable muffins to her grandmother, and if she had to stay the night, so much the better, as there was going to be a great deal of screaming presently, and Turtle was a bit young to be hearing all the words that Turtle's mother planned to be using. — T. Kingfisher

But he's mad, completely mad, and he turns his wives into golems. He needs killing, not negotiation. — T. Kingfisher

I was screaming with joy because the battle calm had come, the same blessed stillness I had felt at Cynuit. It is a joy, that feeling, and the only other joy to compare is that of being with a woman.
It is as though life slows. The enemy moves as if he is wading in mud, but I was kingfisher fast. There is rage, but it is a controlled rage, and there is joy, the joy that the poets celebrate when they speak of battle, and a certainty that death is not in that day's fate. My head was full of singing, a keening note, high and shrill, death's anthem. All I wanted was for more Danes to come to SerpentBreath and it seemed to me that she took on her own life in those moments. — Bernard Cornwell

Glorious cocked an ear back at her. 'Things act according to their natures,' he said. 'But sometimes our natures are complicated. — T. Kingfisher

The Beast looked faintly alarmed.
"Don't worry, I never stab anyone twice in the same hour. I don't want them to think I'm unoriginal."
"I confess, I am more afraid you will clip me bald."
"Vain Beast. — T. Kingfisher

Roses have thorns. That's the price of roses. When you start to forget that, that's when things go wrong. — T. Kingfisher

She did not know many beautiful animals that had sweet tempers, except perhaps butterflies. Then again, there wasn't enough to a butterfly to properly be called a temper. That options did an angry butterfly have, anyway? Stamping eylashed-sized feet? Flapping its wings in a sarcastic manner? — T. Kingfisher

Oh good," said the Beast dryly. "Here I was afraid that I had kidnapped a sane person by mistake." "If you are going to kidnap travelers, you will simply have to take what you can get," snapped Bryony. — T. Kingfisher

Ah,' said Zultan. 'I, too. I keep many books at my home.' He gestured to the books in the tent. 'These are only a few. Those I think might need on this trip, and those I have yet to read and might want, and those old friends that I cannot bear to leave behind. — T. Kingfisher

Rhea had learned everything she knew about hate from her encounters with this swan. — T. Kingfisher

They pretended they weren't there as guards and Nessilka pretended her goblins weren't being guarded, and everyone was reasonably happy. Thumper — T. Kingfisher

She was still going somewhere terrible, but she had a hedgehog, damnit. — T. Kingfisher

I will unmake him," said the Clock Wife simply. "I will pull the marrow from his bones, and pour lead into the spaces left behind. I will make his dying into a place, and visit it every day until the end of eternity. But he is not here. — T. Kingfisher

Oliver Marley understood what it was like to be a specter, a spook or phantom. To his colleagues Oliver had brown eyes, matching hair, a hint of forehead and little else. While logic dictates that eyes, foreheads and hair must in fact belong to some kind of face, and that face be attached by the neck to a body of some fashion, there was precious little evidence to support this. Always peeking out from a computer terminal, behind paperwork or over a cubicle wall, should Oliver have a duck in place of a nose, or a pair of green beans rather than lips, no one would be the wiser. — Kingfisher Pink

Unlike the mice, gremlins really were a problem. If you ground one into flour on accident, the bread had a tendency to explode in the oven, or bleed when you cut into it, or turn into a flock of starlings and tear around the cottage shrieking, and then people came around and had words with the miller, many of which had only four letters and involved hand gestures. — T. Kingfisher

At the edge of heaven, tatters of autumn
Cloud. After ten thousand miles of clear
Lovely morning, the west wind arrives. Here,
Long rains haven't slowed farmers. Frontier
Willows air thin kingfisher colors, and
Red fruit flecks mountain pears. As a flute's
Mongol song drifts from a tower, one
Goose climbs clear through vacant skies. — Du Fu

Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. — T.E. Lawrence

If you're looking for a way to break the contract, I do not know. You'd need a demon or a barrister to answer that. — T. Kingfisher

What's going to happen?" asked Rhea. "I was a witch, not a fortune teller," said Maria testily. "No one knows what's going to happen. — T. Kingfisher

Oh dear God, no, stop!"

Fumblefoot gave her a reproachful look. Stop what?

I have broken into an enchanted manor house and my pony has crapped on the floor. Oh God.

-Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher — T. Kingfisher

She engaged in a few moments of recreational xenophobia, which didn't help at all but did pass the time. Someone — T. Kingfisher

The nice thing about immortality is that you have plenty of time to figure out how to get rid of it. — T. Kingfisher

I think you'd better stay extra alert tonight."

"Okay."

"I'm serious, Jeff. Someone snuck up on both Hampton and Martin, and neither of them are shirkers."

He grins. "You're worried for me, aren't you?"

"Course I am."

"Know what I think?"

I scowl at him, which only widens his grin.

He steps closer, puts a hand to my chin, and lifts it so I can't avoid his gaze. "I think you're in love with me," he says.

I stare at his lips. What comes out of my mouth is: "Jefferson McCauley Kingfisher, you have the swagger of a rooster and the swelled head of a melon. — Rae Carson

It was starting to get impatient. A hedgehog hopping irritably on its hind legs is a tragic sight. — T. Kingfisher

It was as if the words they spoke were weaving a kind of net, a net of normalcy and propriety and sanity, around a situation that was anything but. The — T. Kingfisher

Do you have a name?" asked Gerta. "I do," said the raven. Gerta waited. The raven fluffed its beard. "I am the Sound of Mouse Bones Crunching Under the Hooves of God." — T. Kingfisher

The stone angel did not swoop down from the fountain to carry her off, although honestly, being carried off by an angel did not seem like too terrible a fate at the moment. She — T. Kingfisher

You just didn't bring a pitchfork to a swan fight. — T. Kingfisher

Marriage was like death. You knew it'd happen eventually, but it wasn't something you dwelt on. — T. Kingfisher

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world. — T. S. Eliot

Do I trust you? thought Gerta. I barely know you and you frightened me and then you kissed me, and truth be told, that frightened me even more. — T. Kingfisher

That the Beast was a person, Bryony did not even question, but then, she believed on some level that Fumblefoot was a person, and Blackie the goat, and the neighbor's large and grumpy tomcat. It was not that she was sentimental about animals. Chickens, for example, were not people. You looked into a chicken's eyes and you saw the back of their skulls. — T. Kingfisher

Oh deaf Gog, no, stop!"

Fumblefoot gave her a reproachful look. Stop what?

"I have broken into an enchanted manor house and my pony has crapped on the floor. Oh God. — T. Kingfisher

It was a large, neatly kept cottage, with a well-tended yard full of chickens. Hollyhocks grew along the side, in shades of red and violet, unless magic had gotten into them again, in which case they had a tendency to go plaid. — T. Kingfisher

seconds that these people could have been enemy agents trying to gain my confidence and find out what I knew about the Allied forces, but that only went to demonstrate my state of mind at the time. And this woman had obviously been working on the land. The sweat-packed hair on her temples and the dirt on her hands and grey flannel work suit spoke — Ray Kingfisher

Bob," I say, "a man who is no longer interested in the genetics of inbred hillbilly water unicorns is a man who is no longer interested in life. I am afraid for your priorities, son." — T. Kingfisher

There could not be a manor house. There had never been a manor house anywhere near Lostfarthing. Nobles did not come to Lostfarthing. It was not possible for a noble to disgrace themselves badly enough to be exiled this far east. The Duke of Entwood had been convicted of black magic, cannibalism, and high treason, and while he'd been burned at the stake, his heirs had only been sent as far east as Blue Lady, which was still two day's travel west of Skypepper. — T. Kingfisher

Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher
will not indicate a favoring wind,
or avert the thunderbolt. — Charles Olson

[L]ike a kingfisher I have made my nest on the waves. — Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

She dreamed that night of chickweed, which was a strange thing to dream about. Chickweed is a low, weedy little plant, not very distinguished. No one writes poetry comparing their lovers to chickweed (or if they do, the poems are rarely well received). — T. Kingfisher

Would you like some wine, or would you prefer to yell at me for a little longer?" asked the Beast pleasantly. "I could leave, if you prefer, but I generally hold that those who leave the room when you wish to yell at them are among the most despicable of beings. — T. Kingfisher

In books and movies whenever someone dies there is always an underlying subtext, some kind of grand cosmic lesson to be gleaned from the experience. Popular culture perpetuates the fallacy that whenever someone or something is taken away, someone or something else is always out there waiting in the wings to take its place by the last turn of the page or that final post-credits scene. The reader closes the book with a satisfied smile, the audience leaves the theater filled to the brim with warm fuzzy feelings. But that's entertainment for you, and the world would be a far less wonderful place without their happy endings. However, in the real world what once was, no longer is, and survivors are more often than not left with no other choice but to move on, cosmic lessons learned or not. — Kingfisher Pink

Also, the wizard's response to having a skeletal deer leap in front of him and a bruised and whimpering elf fall off its back was to say, "Oh." That — T. Kingfisher

That sort doesn't like to admit she's been reduced to stealing food, thought the cook. Poor soul! It's only a few apples. Lord, if you're watching, those apples are freely given. You don't hold them against her soul. (The cook was in the habit of lecturing the Lord, whom she considered a colleague.) — T. Kingfisher

Artists are odd," said Mousebones, walking around the man in blue. "Even for humans." — T. Kingfisher

Goblin tea resembles a nice cup of Earl Grey in much the same way that a catfish resembles the common tabby. They share a name, but one is a nice thing to curl up with on a rainy afternoon, and the other is found in the muck at the bottom of polluted rivers and has bits of debris sticking to it. — T. Kingfisher

No matter how pale and pure and perfect you are, the moon is even more perfect. — T. Kingfisher

You have a drawer full of dull butter knives and an old pair of kitchen shears. You are hardly armed to the teeth. — Kingfisher Pink

The river is such a tranquil place, a place to sit and think of romance and the beauty of nature, to enjoy the elegance of swans and the chance of a glimpse of a kingfisher. — Jane Wilson-Howarth

I don't know why I'm second-guessing Crevan's sanity - I'm sitting here talking to a hedgehog mime. — T. Kingfisher

She had presumably decided that the problem was the village, and if everybody in the village was gone, they would have to bring John back to take care of her. It was the sort of plan a child would come up with - simple, self-centered, and utterly heartless. — T. Kingfisher

It was not a terribly good stab. Millers' daughters do not traditionally spend a great deal of time engaged in single combat. — T. Kingfisher

I'm suggesting that if you're going to bring hell down upon someone's head, you should dress for the occasion. — T. Kingfisher

That it was a wolf was somewhat comforting. Wolves talked occasionally. So did bears. Foxes talked all the time, particularly if you caught them in the hen house, where they would do their best to addle you with fine nonsense until they could slip out the door, and it was generally believed that all cats could talk and simply refused to do so for inscrutable reasons of their own. — T. Kingfisher

The problem with crying in the woods, by the side of a white road that leads somewhere terrible, is that the reason for crying isn't inside your head. You have a perfectly legitimate and pressing reason for crying, and it will still be there in five minutes, except that your throat will be raw and your eyes will itch and absolutely nothing else will have changed. — T. Kingfisher

She lifts a bowl of kheer and her thoughts, flittering like dusty sparrows in a brown back alley, turn a sudden kingfisher blue. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni