Besieged Quotes

“Morrigan visited me in my dreams. It tore me away from a nightmare where I was trying to teach high school science to a room full of creationists, so I was mightily relieved to see the Chooser of the Slain.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“I am often reminded how a small fire underneath a vast sky can bind people together like nothing else. For all that we are social creatures, we are too often shoved into solitary confinement by circumstance. The color of our skin isn’t like everyone else’s, or our language is different, or our religion isn’t the one that gets us invited to dinner by the neighbors. That last one has kept me alone for a long, long time.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“I understand," I says, and nod to indicate that I'm in the same room, looking at the same facts.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“Stephen Blackmoore.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“Time-out,” Granuaile said. “Wasn’t there something you could have done about the potato famine?” “That was the first I’d heard of it, honestly, five years in progress by that time. It wasn’t something an elemental would have shared with me. The Irish had grown dependent on a monoculture of potatoes, a mold arrived to feast on that monoculture, and that’s why we should always grow a wide variety of cultivars. But of course Americans are ignoring that lesson now and growing a single potato for all of its French fries. French Frymageddon is coming, I promise you. It would have come already except for the tons of pesticides they’re using to keep the crop viable.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“It tore me away from a nightmare where I was trying to teach high school science to a room full of creationists, so I was mightily relieved to see the Chooser of the Slain.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“What is all this melodrama? Just because they’ve never heard of your favorite thing doesn’t mean they hate their lives or they need your sympathy or need you to come along and show them how to fix it. In fact, it’s kind of arrogant of you to think that. Imperialist, even.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“He does that a lot—go in a different direction, I mean. I sometimes think if it weren’t for Oberon, Siodhachan would be the loneliest man alive.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“Má ithis, nar chacair!” I told him in Gaeilge, a fantastic curse for one such as Mammon, who always wants more: It means, “May you eat but not defecate.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“Ihave never thought that winds howled so much as moaned. My imagination gives them reasons: They moan because they’re weary of their never-ending journey around the globe and are haunted by what they’ve witnessed—species extinction and coral-reef death and miles of trash floating in the ocean and a strange collection of humans who keep saying the earth is doing just fine, in spite of clear evidence to the contrary.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“I do not see a path I can walk on the earth that is not strewn with beauty and horror in equal measure. My road ahead is poetry and blood, and after today, I know I’m prepared to walk it.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“Greta rolls her eyes. “That’s easy. The tax code protects the rich, and lots of voting laws protect a white majority, and arbitration clauses protect corporations from getting sued when they rip people off, and we could go on all day.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“It comes down to the fact that he serves a different value system than any human one. I pointed out that Gaia was interested in protecting the vitality and variety of life on the whole planet. Broadly speaking that’s difficult to argue, because unless you’re falling prey to this predator or that, that basic value is pure and good and beneficial to all concerned, if ye take the long and wide view. But humans, I taught him, rarely take that view. Human laws think of protecting humans first. Though if ye look closely at most human laws, they tend to benefit a narrow few over the good of all humans. I’m sure ye can think of a law or three that protects someone’s personal profit rather than what’s good for everyone.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“If you don’t give people a conventional path to power, they will seek out their own unconventional path.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“Shared knowledge can weigh heavy in the scales of power,”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“Fires were warm cups of non-thinking serenity after the daily rigors of training.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“ Oberon asked. No, Oberon, I told him via our mental link. You’re only the second companion I’ve done that with. Some people—and some creatures—don’t handle long lives very well. It changes them for the worse. But you just keep getting better, buddy. I briefly glanced at the slobbery hunk of beef underneath Oberon’s paw. No thanks; I’m full. I’ll tell you some other night, okay? It’s a story in itself.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“ “What? Oberon, no.” “It’s not something I would think to ask.” “It’s not pandering! Felicity still has a part to play in this. I said at the start there would be vintage poodles. Would you just let me finish?” Granuaile did a poor job of stifling a laugh when she heard me protest the pandering charge. Oberon said, all high and mighty as if he were doing me a favor.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“ “No, Oberon, stakes, as in a wooden stake you drive into the ground. It’s a homophone.” “And you’ve been so patient too.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“Shared knowledge can weigh heavy in the scales of power,” he replied, and I have seen the truth of it since. “Controlling what you want shared is always the issue, and writing down nothing is the most extreme method of control. But while this preserves our secrets, it also limits our ability to spread our wisdom, does it not?”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“I come to dungeon for good time—which maybe is problem, I admit—but I get bad time instead.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“ “What? You didn’t even let me finish my first sentence!” ”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“At that point Daddy took them to a cemetery and said, “Here, kids—what you need is a nice corpse snack. Clotted blood! Om nom nom!”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“I have never thought that winds howled so much as moaned. My imagination gives them reasons: They moan because they’re weary of their never-ending journey around the globe and are haunted by what they’ve witnessed—species extinction and coral-reef death and miles of trash floating in the ocean and a strange collection of humans who keep saying the earth is doing just fine, in spite of clear evidence to the contrary.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“It’s odd how a dog roaming around is a health code violation but serving fried death on a stick isn’t.”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“the bog was already bigger than a king’s ego and at night darker and more dangerous than a badger’s arsehole—ye just really didn’t want to be pokin”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged

“Saoirse,” I”
― Kevin Hearne, Besieged