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T. Kingfisher Quotes

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Famous T. Kingfisher Quotes

“Very unlikely people, you know, will share confidences with each other if they think the other person understands. A prisoner who won't tell a guard anything will thaw immediately if he's put in a cell with another man in for the same crime. And doctors who would bite off their own tongues before showing indecision to a patient will tell another doctor about how little they know and how frightened they are. I've seen it happen many times. It's how spies work.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“It was fourteen hours later that Marra and the dust-wife flung themselves at the stone lid, scrabbling with all their strength. For a horrible moment, she thought that it would not be enough, that they would have to come back with levers, but it began, inch by agonising inch, to slide. They got it perhaps six inches and had to stop, panting. Fingers slid out of the gap and caught the edge. Marra nearly wept with relief. Fenris shoved the lid aside and sat up, gasping for air. 'You're really here,' he said, bending over so that his forehead touched his drawn-up knees. 'I kept imagining voices, but you're really here this time.' 'We're here,' said Marra, the words this time jabbing her like pins. He took a half dozen sobbing breaths. 'It is very close in there,' he said, 'even with holes.' His face was slick with sweat or tears, Marra did not know. 'Close and cold.' 'I'm sorry,' said Marra. 'I'm sorry. It was the only way I could think of.' She pulled him out of the coffin, or he climbed out and she helped, and he wrapped his arms around her and they stood together, shaking.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“Did an echo just tell us to run?' asked Agnes, adjusting Finder, and looking rather calmer than Marra felt. 'Do ghostly echoes have our best interest at heart?' asked Fenris, also remarkably calm. 'Rarely,' said the dust-wife. Marra thought, I'm surrounded by lunatics, but and I love them all, but maybe we should be running, anyway.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“You need to train him to sleep elsewhere,' said the dust-wife, disapprovingly. 'Otherwise you'll have a rooster who thinks he should dive headfirst in to your cleavage when he wants to roost.' 'It's been a while since any man wanted to dive in to my cleavage,' said Agnes. 'It might be a nice change.' 'Not when the spurs grow in.' 'Oh, well, probably not.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“They emerged, stumbling in to the starlight. The man at Marra's side gasped in air as if he had never breathed before. 'Free,' he said. 'Am I free of that place?' 'Almost,' said the dust-wife. 'Not quite yet. We've got one foot in the other world, and it isn't safe to linger.' ... 'Now,' said the dust-wife, leaning on her staff. 'Now we're all the way back. Now you're free.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“The majority of the crowd had looked human from a distance, but once she was among them, she had her doubts. Some were human shaped but had green or blue skin. A number had horns rising from their foreheads, short and pointed as antelopes'. One woman walked by with a rack of antlers that would do any stag proud, and small black birds seated on each tine, wearing silver collars around their necks. Others were not even human shaped. A trio of boards in starched collars, walking on their hind legs, went grunting past. Six white rats, each nearly three feet tall, carried a palanquin on their shoulders. And who could guess what lay beneath the pale braids that covered that figure from head to toe?”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“... something in the back of her mind whispered that there was no help coming and if she ran out of money, she had no real way to earn more. Her only skills were embroidery and weeding gardens. I suppose I could sell my body, but I'm not sure how one does that, either. It seemed like it would be a lot more complicated than getting a seat on a coach. Dis you approach people, or did they approach you, and how did you start a conversation that ended in money for sex? Was there an etiquette? This was not the sort of thing one was taught at convents. It was easier just to sleep in the coaches.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“Stephen woke up stiff and sore and his first thought was that he was a miserable bastard of a man who'd hurt a woman who deserved a whole lot better. It wasn't until he'd gotten up and downed some tea that he realized his first thought on waking hadn't been about not getting out of bed forever. 'It seems that I am being dragged back into the feeling world whether I want to be or not. I only wish guilt had not been the hook to drag me with.”

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Book:Paladin's Grace
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“He isn't my prince,' said Marra acidly. 'If you plan to kill him, he is. Your victim. Your prince. All the same. You sink a knife in to someone's guts, you're bound to them in that moment. Watch a murderer go through the world and you'll see all his victims trailing behind him on black cords, shades of ghosts waiting for their chance.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“The king gathered himself. It felt as if the tomb was breathing in. The painted warriors lifted their swords and the archers let fly their arrows, aimed at the dust-wife. They were trapped in the wall and it should not have been possible for them to reach her, and yet for a moment, it seemed as if she would be drawn in to the wall, as if the arrows must reach her... Moonlight flashed as she held up her staff and the painted arrows fell apart in to scattered pigment across the floor. I will not bend! hissed the dead king, rising from his throne. 'Then you will break,' said the dust-wife, and slammed her staff across the painted wall.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“She broke in to a run, not caring if the thief-wheel heard her now, half sobbing. 'Fenris! Agnes! Dust-wife!' 'Marra?' She broke in to the room and before she could even focus, Fenris had thrown his arms around her and had his face pressed against her hair. 'You're alive,' he said. 'I thought I'd lost you. You're alive.' 'You're alive, too!' she said. She wanted to stop and think about what I thought I'd lost you might mean, but it didn't quite seem like the time. And he was very warm and she was very cold and it was very pleasant to be held in such a fashion. 'You're alive. 'Yes, yes,' said the dust-wife testily. 'We're all alive. Please don't cry on me about it, though.' Fenris finally released her, although not without reluctance. Bonedog immediately leapt up at her, washing her face with his tongue.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“Somebody gives a lonely child a toy and they pour all their hopes and fears and problems into it. Do it long enough and intensely enough, and then it just needs a stray bit of bad luck and the toy wakes up. Of course, it knows that the only reason it is alive is because of the child. A tiny personal god with one worshipper. It latches on and... well.' She clicked her tongue. 'Normally, you get them pried off and burned long before adolescence. Impressive that it lasted this long.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“The staircase seemed much longer going up than coming down. Perhaps that was always the way in a fairy world. The man she had ransomed, the man she needed, had his arm locked around hers. They leaned against each other, shoulder against shoulder, two humans in a place where no humans should ever have come. When Marra looked over at him in the sickly firefly light, she could see a silvery terror in his eyes, mastered but very much alive. Bonedog walked beside them, Marra's hand wrapped around the rope collar. She felt the illusion of fur against her fingers, except when she didn't and he briefly felt like bones.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“It looked like a market, but such a market as Marra had never seen. There were jeweled pavilions crowded next to mud huts and hide tents and things that looked like upside-down bird nests. The aisles between were crowded, but the people within them did not move like a crowd. They moved like dancers, some light, some heavy, some in circling solitary waltzes. They reminded Marra far more of the courtiers in the prince's palace than of the town on market day.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“The Toothdancer looked like a stork or a heron, with a long hard bill and a curved, mobile neck. He wore a tattered black suit, with feathers sticking out of the holes, and his hands were very human. When he turned his head, Marra saw half a man's face below the beak, as if it were a mask, and yet his eyes were clearly a heron's, the colour of new-minted coins, and set back from the beak like a bird's.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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