Dreadful Company Quotes

“No one should be that good at math, even if they are a fiend from Hell.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“Oh-kay,” she said on a sigh. “It can’t be worse than edgelord vampires from fucking Yorkshire, whatever’s behind there,”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“You can’t possibly adopt stray French monsters; wherever would you put it?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “It doesn’t appear to be in bad shape; honestly, I think someone’s been taking at least basic care of it—no mats or snarls, it’s a decent weight for its size, completely tame. It’s not a thoroughbred, though, which means either it’s an adopted stray or it’s been summoned, which is a little odd. God knows why anyone would bother doing that kind of magic, but whatever—I suppose Parisian monster fanciers have to get their jollies somehow. I think it’s come to visit, not to stow away in my suitcase.”

“If this keeps up, you are going to be the most absurd Disney princess of all time,” Ruthven told her. “Instead of happy little bluebirds perching on your finger to sing duets, you will be hung about with monsters like a tree with monkeys, and it will thoroughly complicate your personal life.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“And what was most often walled up in cellars, other than mad wives, pregnant nuns, or importunate ex-friends? Valuable objects.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“I suppose that’s a valid point. The four of us can hang around a little longer before we leave.”

“Five,” said Greta. “If you think I’m going to sit around up here while the rest of you go off to battle, you are dead wrong, Varney; I’ve had enough of that, and I know my way around the lair.”

“She does,” Grisaille confirmed. “Bits of it anyway.”

“Greta,” said Varney, ignoring this, “under no circumstances are you to go back under the city. We only just got you out of there again—”

“No you didn’t,” she said. “I did. Remember? And if you want to murder Corvin, then imagine how I feel. I had to put up with him and his body glitter and his skull goblet and tiresome insinuations for several nights in a row. I get a say in this, okay?”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“The tunnel leading away from Corvin’s lair had undergone several twists and turns, leaving the electric light of the inhabited passageways behind, and it was only because the little turnip-sized wellmonster huddled against her neck had quite unexpectedly begun to glimmer palely with a cold unnatural light that she was able to find her way at all. When I get out of this, she told herself, eyes wide in the near-complete darkness, I am so writing a paper on these creatures. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them bioluminescing, but I’m jolly glad they do. Its eyes were two small pale lamps, brighter than the glowing skin around them.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“It’s not just music, it’s make-believe, it’s imaginary worlds stacked on imaginary worlds,”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“and he stroked it very carefully with a fingertip. The tiny quivering delicacy of its life was very vivid to him. Very vivid. That I should be trusted so much, he thought, looking down at it. That I should be allowed to hold this creature.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“The most dangerous phases of any cycle are not the extremes, but the point halfway through the cycle: where things are balanced precisely between those two extremes, where matters could tip either way with equal ease. The edges are sharpest, right there where the balance-point lies, and the vast potential energy of either extreme hangs waiting. This is why magic done at dawn and twilight is easier, and more dangerous, than at other times—and why the half-moon, neither crescent nor full, holds the most power of any phase.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“He looked down at the rose in his other hand, its neck drooping like a tubercular heroine’s, and felt abruptly and horribly sorry for it: for the fact that it had been grown somewhere, fed and watered and nurtured, and cut and brought all the way here to this airport to be bought and given to someone, to make them smile, and here it was with him instead, dying in his hand. Thwarted of its purpose. Its small brief life all wasted.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“The over-the-top opulence offered the same kind of uninhibited, glittering cheer as a polished drag queen’s performance.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“You can in fact do almost anything you want to do,” he continued, “as long as you are willing to put in the effort and devote the necessary patience to the task. Your condition doesn’t make things impossible, just difficult.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“right now I’m going to worry about things I can have some effect on.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“No sex, even mind-blowingly good sex, was worth dealing with a girlfriend—consort—who regularly got so fucked up on various substances that she woke you up screaming like a goddamn banshee and throwing a fit.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“He gave an extraordinarily expressive little gesture, indicating that the lady had been well endowed with tracts of land. “Nasty sharp pointy teeth”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“And that outfit is completely, but completely naff, my dear. You can’t possibly show up to Corvin’s table dressed like that. What size ballgown do you wear?”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“I don’t suppose this will all turn out to be a hilarious misunderstanding,” said Crepusculus. “Ha ha, incompetent demon is incompetent, news at eleven?” “No,” said Brightside.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“It was always bloody well up to Greta to do what must be done, however she could do it; she knew that, she’d always known it, that had never not been the case, but sometimes—God, sometimes it was hard.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“You can leave, Sofiria, you can escape from Corvin, you can get help and support and shelter from someone who’s competent and not a complete twit. There are sensible vampires out there. I know several of them.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“Why is it always sparkling and vivacious? Can’t one simply glitter?” Ruthven quirked an eyebrow at her. “That’s a loaded question to ask a vampire.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“I don’t know why I seem to have acquired monsters all of a sudden,”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“metatemporal energy flow in the surrounding area.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“Winston was hovering in the archway, looking impatient, if a tattered bit of taffeta could look impatient.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“It really did seem as if something thoroughly out-of-the-ordinary had been built into the structure from the very beginning; a significant proportion of the ironwork girders that supported it had been specially made to order, using a specific alloy, and the long list of stones that had been chosen for the interior decoration included a noticeable number of minerals that held specific occult meaning. The kind of crystal-healing enthusiast who spelled magic with a k would have a field day with the masonry manifest.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“He still wasn't quite certain of -- well, of many things regarding Greta Helsing, nor did he have the experience or confidence to ask the right kind of questions to make things more certain; worse still, he was acutely aware of this lack. It simply wasn't something he had any practice with. His previous interactions with the fairer sex had been more along the lines of 'the vampire is at his hideous repast,' rather than 'can I buy you a drink,' and it continued to amaze him when Greta seemed legitimately to enjoy his company, and desire more of it.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“Mister Rogers once said that: after any disaster, look for the helpers, look for the people who step in to try to make things better.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“She could vaguely remember a description of black hangings with white musical notes on them and thought again how much Corvin would have appreciated the opera ghost’s I-am-made-of-death aesthetic. The original edgelord.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“Essographs—literally, thing-writers, named after the esson, the reality particle—measured fluctuations in the standing magical, or mirabilic, field.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“Sour ground,” said Crepusculus. It was an apt descriptor, often used of places that had seen bad deaths and hasty burials; you got sour ground surrounding abandoned gallows, and patches of it all over battlefields.”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company

“It had been a long time since she’d seen a tricherpeton, commonly if unimaginatively known as hairmonsters. There was a very specific and small community within the supernatural and super-adjacent world that bred them, like pedigreed dogs, in lots of different varieties, although you could summon them individually via magic if you didn’t have the patience or wherewithal to set up a breeding program. This one wouldn’t have won any show awards for conformation or breed-specific traits; in fact, it looked like a complete mongrel—but the quality of the hair under Greta’s hands was impressive nonetheless. (There were sphynx varieties, but they were somewhat mercifully rare: a hairless faceless creature with nothing but a mouth was difficult to look at, even though their temperament was among the sweetest of the tricherpeton breeds.)”
― Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company