The Devil and Mrs. Gooch Quotes

“People talked to everything”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Trees do not speak in the same manner as you or I. They do not need to use words, because words are fickle and changeable like the Gramayre. The trees are not of the Measure, and they do not obey the old laws. The trees were spun from grudges in the ancient places of the world, and they are bitter from long ages of suffering, being cut up into lawn chairs, and frames for your pictures.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“There are no Green Men left, that’s what they say. And they say it because they need it to be true, and because they tried to make it so. But as Professor Green’s life ended, a fragment of his nature trickled down into the soil of Verdigris. In a park forgotten and covered in debris, a man with no name felt it, and his vine-covered hands clutched his chest. In a rotting house near the ocean, a woman in evergreen silk with acorns for eyes felt his passing. Under the stone and metal, old roots awakened. It had been a long time since a Green Man had called on the magic of the grove buried under the city, and it was restless. You see, one can bury the world under layers of craft and artifice, but it is only ever a mask. One day, the earth will remove that mask again.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Dropping to a crouch, he pulled his knife from his jacket. It was a wicked knife, a jagged knife. A knife to do the dirty work no one else wanted to do. It was part of him, like the hooves, the horns, the fire that raced through his veins. The Devil had a knife. He didn’t have a sword, or a spear. A sword was a weapon of war, and the Devil was not a fighter. A spear was a tool for hunting, and the Devil was not a predator. A knife was a tool for killing, yes, but it was so much more than that. It was the very beginning of skulduggery, the tool you had when nothing else was left to you. It was for investigating, for escape, and even (in a pinch) cutting out the rot so you could heal again. A knife was ready for any opportunity, and so the Devil bore a knife.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“For as long as anyone can remember, no elf has borne a child inside them. Instead, elves bestow children on whomever they choose, and the chosen agent develops the necessary features to carry the child to term. It’s very efficient for the elf, but not so much for everyone else.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“(cramped subscript running across top margin, unidentified) Cross-reference also cats, ravens, money spiders, and others. Complete list to be found in volume XII, Of Unnatural History, section XIX, “On That Which Should Not Be Touched, Look at It, Look at Those Colours, It’s Bright Red, Does That Look Safe to You, What Were You Thinking”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“The collective noun for wizards varies depending on who you ask. The average person might call them a college. A dictionary might call them a covenant. Most wizards think of each other as a nuisance. It is rare, then, even in an institution of learning such as the Tabernacle, for a group of wizards to come and work their magic together. Wizardry is a solitary discipline, because there’s a finite number of afternoons you can spend debating the correct alignment for a submerged cuckoo before someone loses their temper.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Gwendolyn didn’t take any prisoners if she could dispose of them instead. They wouldn’t be efficient. Or profitable. And where was the fun in that? You could have all sorts of fun with a prisoner. They’d plead for their lives, and you’d twiddle your moustache. They’d attempt a lazy escape, and you’d foil it at the last second. You’d introduce a cellmate, let them develop a bond, and then kill them off at a moment of high dramatic tension. Then, when all seemed lost, you’d put the least attentive guard on watch holding a suspiciously attainable bunch of keys and let your prisoner make it out alive, so they could swear revenge on you and the whole delicious cycle could continue ad infinitum. You didn’t go around killing a decent nemesis, it wasn’t sporting.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Professor Green was dying. And as Reaper stepped forward, she saw his face, and she hesitated. He was beautiful, in the way that only those in death’s grip can be beautiful. Reaper had stood at the bedside of emperors, at the cribs of children. She had watched the very first creature die, gasping for air, and she would be there for the very last, when it came to that. But there was a nobility in this man’s face, something reminiscent of death in all its finality, its majesty. So few Green Men were left, each one was a testament to entropy. All things ended, all things died. His leaves were curling at the edges, wilting as his life passed from his body. She did not have a heart, or it would have skipped a beat.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Cities are alive. It’s one of those facts that people find surprising, though it’s really quite obvious if you stop running in circles for a moment and look around. The rumbling of traffic, the bickering of vermin, the sunrise over the tallest building—this is the city talking to you, to herself, to the world.* If you are a quiet person and you spend a few hundred years in one place, you can even begin to discern words in the chaos, sentiments relayed to you across planar boundaries by the genius loci, the spirit of the place.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“A bugbear is closer to a black bear than a grizzly bear. They are ambush hunters, and rely on body weight to crush their foes to death. They can survive temperatures that would boil water, and can live quite comfortably in the heart of a volcano. If you meet one in the wild, you should stand up tall and adopt a threatening posture, because if you’re going to be eaten, it’s best to do it with some dignity.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“The wood spoke to him. There were thoughts and sentiments embedded in the wood, scattered ideas from dead minds splintered into a thousand pieces. He could feel it through his hands, through his bare feet on the planks. Many voices calling to him from beyond the grave. Memories trapped in the fabric of a tree, felled for lumber and used for sorcerous purpose, but retaining a trace of potency. The truth was now obvious to him. The Backways were made from Green Men, from their heart trees, trees like the one in the Tabernacle courtyard. A distant sadness blossomed in his heart, held at bay only by the comforting presence he felt in the panel he was touching. It was not a full remembrance, and yet it knew him for its own. You are not alone, it said to him. We are here, and we are yours, and you are ours. Follow us.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Backways (the) (n.) being an extradimensional network of tunnels created for the purposes of supernatural travel between forgotten locations, only accessible by those with the authorization of universal Measure—”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“The Devil, empowered by universal Measure at the beginning of things, had to honour a number of small technical details. Most were the things you would expect—turn up where you’re needed, foster general disarray, and so on—but he couldn’t see the reason behind “If someone drops a bundle of twigs, you must count them all.” Still, you couldn’t gainsay the Measure, even if she was missing.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Stolen moments are more common than you think. For instance, on the first day of autumn, the sun beetle steals an hour from the day. It gives it back later in the year, sometimes but not always. As a result, the years are getting shorter, which is a fact everyone whispers under their breath, but no one can really prove, except for the Tabernacle’s Institute of Higher Education (which specializes in monitoring celestial objects and the beasts that move them around).”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“The Reaper came for everyone, eventually, to snip the thread of your life and weave it into the grand tapestry of things that had been. But she was old, and very busy, and she didn’t always arrive promptly, resulting in the kind of professional whoops-a-daisies you can only afford to perpetrate if you held an office that made everyone around you keen to overlook your shortcomings.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Gonorilla gooch’s journey back to Gooch Towers was not a pleasant one. Those of you who have travelled any great distance in a sack, the back of a trunk, or a small box will know just how long it can seem to the person stuck inside. Those of you who haven’t can probably imagine it, and some of you have it yet in store for you.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“There was no king, not since the last had buried himself in the dark soil with a promise to return, so long ago that no one remembered which hill he was under.‡”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Verdigris was replete with plumbing, an early invention originally designed to repel vampires from homes, eventually repurposed for drinking and bathing.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“At this, the three women dropped their disguises, and the foolish king found himself in the presence of three enchantresses, shrouded in magic both bright and terrible. Realizing his mistake, the king wept and begged for forgiveness. “For your hubris,” said the Reaper, draped in the dark finality of winter, “I grant you the gift that you sought, and you shall live eternally, never to find rest in death when your time has come.” And with that, she left, never to trouble the elves again. “For your pride,” said the Spinner, clad in the bright green of spring, “I grant you potential, never to be realized. May you walk the long paths of this world unfulfilled.” And with that, she departed also. Last came the Measure, wearing the bold colours of sagacious autumn, to deliver her punishment. But as she watched the elf king weep, a sliver of mercy crept into her heart, and her hand wavered. “I cannot undo the curse of my sisters,” she said, “but I give you instead this gift. When you are ready, and have had your fill of long life and unburnished potential, those of you that choose it may enter the service of universal Measure to aid those who are yet to come. You will be familiar to them, and the great works of the Gramayre will be worked not by you, but through you, until such a time as there is Gramayre no more, and all things come to dust.” And this is how elves came to be how they are.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Each day, he would take his gilded carriage through his kingdom, and his subjects would touch the ground as it passed, thinking to themselves, “Surely we are blessed to have such a young and beautiful king,” in the way people are wont to do when they haven’t yet discovered more emotionally devastating and democratic modes of government.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“It is said that elves were not always as we know them. They lived lives of mortal toil, which rose and set in the same manner as we are accustomed, and they spent these lives under a familiar sun with all the woes and joys that mortals recognize. This was a time before they withdrew beyond the border of twilight, and before their hearts turned to malice and filigree.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Verdigris’s waterlogged climate no longer supported trees in any great number, but survivors could be found scattered in walkways and promenades throughout the city. The Tabernacle tree wasn’t from the original grove, but it was a descendant. It had been a Green Man once, like many trees, until one day they put down roots and gave up their walking form to become one with the earth. It was, if you looked at it from a certain angle, akin to what the mortal races described as death, though a Green Man could choose the time of their passing. There would come a time when the professor would put down his own roots, and let the cares of the conscious world slip away. Placing a hand on the bark, he could feel the sleeping presence within the tree, a faint echo of the Green Man it had once been.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“The prevailing school of thought on the celestial beetle was Perpetual Analysis Theory, a doctrine which required many graphs, logs, and maps to try to predict its movements. “It’s a beetle,” they would sometimes say when their charts failed to yield accurate prognostications, throwing their hands in the air, “who can say what it’s going to do next?” Even if it was unclear what the Institute of Higher Education would do if the beetle were to vanish one day and never return, it was nice to think that (for a problem which might end the world at any moment) someone, somewhere, was looking into it.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“Excepting the annual Deviation holiday marking the end of the calendar year, the sun beetle had never stolen the sun for more than a few hours (always returning in time for daybreak), but the scholars of the Institute of Higher Education were not taking any chances.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“He’d given his class on Rudimentary Sorceries a paper on Prognosticating Juxtapositions, in the hope that some of them would just quit the course and reduce his paperwork load, but some of the little bastards had unexpectedly handed the work in, which meant he had to give the class again tomorrow morning. He expected they’d be wanting grades, and then another lesson after that. It was a never-ending task. Really, the students were the most devastating part of working in education.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“There didn’t seem much point arguing with her. Green rarely argued with anyone, at least not openly. In his head he had a bank full of scathing retorts and devastating conversation-finishers, but they were reserved for when he replayed the talks in his head after the fact.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“It wasn’t unheard of for scholars of the Tabernacle to employ servants of an arcane nature to assist in their studies, often little creatures like frogs or bats, and some of them were ensorcelled to mimic the habits of more intelligent creatures, or physically transformed to make them more useful. This manipulation had never attracted Professor Green. It was in poor taste, he thought, perhaps even cruel, to bind a creature thus, and so he had chosen to work alone. Mrs. Bobkins, however, was altogether different—it was in her bearing. There were rumours of forbidden books possessing their own intelligence, which could well take the form of a familiar or caretaker. A famulus. No book of magic recovered by the Tabernacle had manifested such a creature in many decades, as far as he was aware, but Mrs. Bobkins, if what she said was true, was almost certainly the famulus belonging to the Mount Pelican Household Gramayre.”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“He hurried across the cold flagstones, each engraved with the ouroboros of the university, alongside the motto (Not this again).”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel

“You are a gargoyle in the service of the Tabernacle, and you will let me through this inst—” “Gargoyle?” The rumble came from deep within the statue, like the far-off shifting of tectonic plates. The ominous tone stopped Blithe in his tracks. Green stepped back a moment. Then another pace. “Gargoyle?” The statue’s voice rose in pitch and volume. “Do I look like I spew water? Do I perch on the side of a building and vomit on strangers? DO I PISS FROM A BALCONY?” It was yelling now, and students in the cloisters were gathering to watch from a safe distance. “A gargoyle? I am a grotesque, sir. A grotesque. I’m not some experimental fancy, I embody a rich symbolic legacy!”
― Oliver Darkshire, The Devil and Mrs. Gooch: A Novel