Jackalope Wives and Other Stories Quotes

“The core of being a witch is that you don’t fall down while there’s work to be done. Sometimes that means you invent work to keep yourself standing upright.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“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, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“It was easier that way,” she said. “You get over what you can’t have faster than you get over what you could. And we shouldn’t always get what we think we want.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“Of course it hurts her!” yelled Grandma. “You think you can have your skin and your freedom burned away in front of you and not scream? Sweet mother Mary, boy, think about what you’re doing! Be cruel or be kind, but don’t be both, because now you’ve made a mess you can’t clean up in a hurry.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“And then you figure that you get unicorn horses and unicorn cows and some of those unicorn gazelles over in the desert where they got all the stories about evil antelope unicorns, and of course whales are all descended from hoofstock that went back into the ocean a shit-ton of time ago, pardon my language, but I don’t think you can really express geologic time properly without profanity and you figure that maybe that Ambulocetus what they call the “walking whale” took the unicorn genes with him and if it happened a bunch and they all swam around together and kept marrying their cousins the way you’re not supposed to do, you’d get your narwhals eventually.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“The greatest thing I ever made came alive,” he said finally. “Because I wanted to make my wife happy. And now she’s gone and it sits there and I feed it and sometimes I dream about setting us both on fire.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“She had the sensation again of standing on the edge of an emotion so huge that if she let it reach her, she would drown.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“Goats respected her. Goats respect very little, but they recognized some of themselves in her, and so they gave her what courtesy goats give to each other. (This is hardly any, of course, but a trifle more than none at all.) The Judas goat that worked in the slaughterhouse considered her a colleague instead of a necessary annoyance.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“A little bit of the niceness sort of oozed off him when he looked in the back of the pickup and saw Donna icing down the narwhal, and he got a funny expression like a man who has just stepped in something and is afraid to look down and see what it might be, and then he wanted to know if it was a stolen narwhal and I am afraid I lied and said that narwhal had been a voluntary surrender and then I was a little bit nervous because I could feel it going bad so I spun him a story about a friend who hadn’t gotten his narwhal spayed and now there was a litter but he’d found good homes except for this one and I don’t think he believed me on account of that being a monumentally stupid story but he also didn’t want to call one of the Platinum Leadership Council people a liar to their face, just in case I was looking to die myself and leave them money for a black-light jellyfish tank, which was what they were currently trying to fund according to the newsletters that they occasionally sent out to the house.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“So I got out the Buffalo then, which is what I call the truck my mother left me, because of the time I went to Namibia and saw the African buffalo which are fearless and charge without warning and kill more people than any other animal on the continent and as it happens all those things also described my mother driving her truck, so the name stuck.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“Right,” I said, “I need your help because I think I need a virgin to soothe this narwhal who’s been traumatized,” and she asked how it had been traumatized and I reminded her about when she’d gone on a blind date with Bob back when she was in the closet and she slammed down the phone and was coming down the driveway before I’d finished talking.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“Bob,” I said, “we have been over this ground before. There is an acceptable ratio of cat pictures to screeds about men’s rights and you have reversed the numbers on that particular ratio, and that is why I don’t plan to friend you again. So what happened with the unicorn?”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“My wife wanted a son,” he said. “We couldn’t have one. So I carved him.” He looked into his own tea. “It’s not a good idea to do that.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“Where’s my horse, old man?” asked the marionette.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“She could not imagine not carving. Even when business was dreadful and she had to spend half the income from waitressing just to keep the stall open, it never occurred to her to quit.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“Down in the desert, the music played and the jackalope wives danced. And one scarred jackalope went leaping into the circle of firelight and danced like a demon, while the moon laid down across the saguaro’s thorns.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“He’ll kill you,” the old woman said. “Or cure you. Or maybe both. You don’t have to do it. This is the bit where you get a choice. But when it’s over, you’ll be all the way something, even if it’s just all the way dead.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“I didn’t do a damn thing, except not let her die when I should have.”
“There’s those would say that was more than enough.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“A raven croaked overhead and another one snickered somewhere off to the east. The jackalope wife paused, leaning on her crutch, and looked up at the wings with longing. “Oh no,” said Grandma. “I’ve got no patience for riddle games, and in the end they always eat someone’s eyes. Relax, child. We’re nearly there.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I ain’t got the patience for coyotes. They’d maybe fix you up but we’d both be stuck in a tale past telling, and I’m too old for that. Come on.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“Perhaps we shouldn’t always get what we think we want.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories

“Eventually the girls learn better. Either the hurts are petty little things and they get tired of whining or the hurt’s so deep and wide that they drown in it. The smart ones heave themselves back to shore and the slower ones wake up married with a husband who lies around and suffers in their direction. It’s part of a dance as old as the jackalopes themselves.”
― T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories