Michelle Brumley > Michelle's Quotes

“Tanaquil gently toed the peeve. "I'll unfasten the window. Jump out to the lower roof and run."
"Stay and bite," said the peeve.”
― Tanith Lee, Black Unicorn

“I want to live and work alone. If we get married, do I have to live with you? No, he said. Will you marry me? Do I have to act like a wife? I don’t really want to be a wife. No, you don’t need to be a wife, he said. Will you marry me? If we get married, will we be able to sleep with other people? Yep, he said. Will you marry me? Can I maintain total control of my life? I need total control of my life. Yes, darling. I’m not trying to control you. At all. Will you marry me? I probably don’t want kids. That’s fine. I already have three. They’re great. Will you marry me? If I marry you and it doesn’t work, can we just get divorced? Sure, he said brightly.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“So, as long as you can get enough to eat, and can avoid all the various lethal infections, the dangers of childbirth, lead poisoning, and the extreme violence, you should live a long time.
All you have to worry about are the doctors.”
― Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

“You can tell that things are fundamentally wrong when a statute has to be passed (in 1330) to stop galoers [jailers] refusing to accept certain prisoners. It seems they are refusing to imprison criminals who are not rich enough to bribe them.

Justice is a relative concept in all ages. The fourteenth century is no exception.”
― Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

“In case you have any doubt about the level of danger, let it be stated unequivocally. Jousting is dangerous. A late-fourteenth-century knight will be wearing armor weighing eighty to one hundred pounds. He himself weighs perhaps two hundred pounds. He will be seated on a high saddle, charging toward you with a closing speed of about forty miles per hour on a destrier weighing more than a thousand pounds, and carrying a lance in which all the force is concentrated on a steel tip. Even if the tip is capped or blunt, the point of impact will be no more than a few square inches. The force exerted through that small area is enormous. If your opponent makes contact with your helmet, the blow may be likened to being knocked about the head with a hammer weighing half a ton, weilded at a speed of forty miles an hour. If you could not fall off your horse under such circumstances, you would not survive. Of course, falling off still means crashing to the ground from a galloping horse, in heavy armor, which is sometimes fatal in itself.”
― Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

“Well," she asked, "how do you gentlemen like living in a haunted house?"
"It's perfectly fine," Luke said, "perfectly fine. It gives me an excuse to have a drink in the middle of the night.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“The rain was that endless, gray, pounding kind of rain that makes your house feel cold and sad even if your mother's spirit isn't dying upstairs.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Round House

“The sky was overladen with stars. If you looked closely there were stars in the grass as well--dew turned to ice on the tips of grass blades.”
― D'Arcy McNickle, The Surrounded

“Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield

"Why do we got names like we do?" I said.
"They come from old Indian names. We had our own way of naming before white people came over and spread all those dad names around in order to keep the power with the dads."
I didn't understand this explanation about dads. And I didn't know if Bear Shield meant shields that bears used to protect themselves, or shields people used to protect themselves against bears, or were the shields themselves made out of bears?”
― Tommy Orange, There There

“Fritti, too, his head full of Hushpad and Firefoot and red claws, finally crossed the borders of the dream-fields. The furry tangle of Folk drowsed and mumbled away the waning Hour of Final Dancing.”
― Tad Williams, Tailchaser's Song

“The water rose up from the swiftly flowing river at the bottom of the Hararscrape, and from where they crouched the setting sun, shining through this curtain of mist, tore the sky into glittering gold, red and purple.”
― Tad Williams, Tailchaser's Song

“All right," she said, and looked at me for what objectively I knew was 2.4 seconds and subjectively about twenty excruciating minutes.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red