A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking Quotes

“You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don't ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“You didn’t fail,” I said. “They wouldn’t let you succeed. It’s different.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“But I shouldn’t have had to do any of it. There should have been so many grown-ups who should have fixed things before it got down to me and Spindle. It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“It seemed like once you agreed that the government could put you on a list because of something you were born with, you were asking for trouble.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“When you're different, even just a little different, even in a way that people can't see, you like to know that people in power won't judge you for it.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“It is nearly impossibly to be sad when eating a blueberry muffin. I'm pretty sure that's a scientific fact.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“If you have ever prepared for a siege in two days, then you know what the next few days were like. If you haven’t, then you probably don’t. Well…a big formal wedding is about the same (and because we do cakes, I’ve been on the periphery of a few), except that if things go wrong in a siege you’ll all die horribly, and in formal weddings, the stakes are much higher.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“You haven't lived until you've seen a cookie look smug.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“Apparently a girl walking through the Elbow was unusual, but a girl with a madwoman riding a dead horse was perfectly acceptable. There was probably a moral lesson in there somewhere, but I had given up on moral lessons for today.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“He doesn’t seem to mind me taking bits to make bread, and it’s still the best sourdough in town. We just don’t tell anybody about the eating-rats thing.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“After a minute, I said, “I never wanted to be a hero.”

His face was solemn. “Nobody ever does.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“Well... I have this... thing". Saying I have a homicidal sourdough starter sounded much too bizarre.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“Don't ask me where the cookies get the dances they do--this batch had been doing hornpipes. The last batch did waltzes, and the one before that hade performed a decidedly lewd little number that had even made Aunt Tabitha blush. A little too much spice in those, I think.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“I expect this won’t be your last set of medals, my dear. Heroism is an unfortunate habit.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“Ironically I am publishing this in the midst of COVID-19, when we all started making sourdough at home and then started protesting police brutality. Suddenly a twelve year old book was actually relevant. Go figure.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“I stuck both hands into the soup tureen and tried to convince him that what the world needed was a whole lot more Bob.
As this coincided with what Bob himself had always believed, pretty soon I had commandeered a horse trough and had footmen dumping fifty pound sacks of flour into it.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“It was amazing. Terror cannot actually stand up to a full bladder. I was about to be hauled up on murder charges, and all I could think about was oh god I have to go so baaaaad…”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“He likes me best, maybe because I feed him the most often. He tolerates Aunt Tabitha. My uncle won’t go into the basement any more, he claims Bob actually hissed at him once. It would have been a belching sort of hiss, I imagine”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“It’s the middle of the bloody night! It’s so late it’s practically early!”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“...but hey, once a baker, always a baker. If I was going to get thrown in the dungeon, at least I was going to leave a trail of quality pastries behind me.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“If you have ever prepared for a siege in two days, then you know what the next few days were like. If you haven't, then you probably don't. Well...a big formal wedding is about the same (and because we do cakes, I've been on the periphery of a few), except that if things go wrong in a siege you'll all die horribly, and in formal weddings, the stakes are much higher.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don’t ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“Baking was normal. If I was baking, then everything else was normal,”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“He stopped there, because if he kept talking, he had to ask a fourteen-year-old girl to come to the front lines of a battle, and he hated it and he knew he had to do it, and I knew I had to come because somebody had to tell the golems what to do. This is a lot to not actually say.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“She thinks I’m a hero,” I said, when the silence had stretched out. “But I shouldn’t have had to do any of it. There should have been so many grown-ups who should have fixed things before it got down to me and Spindle. It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“Meanwhile, Spindle was still looking at me like I was an idiot. Mind you, he did this so often that I was starting to wonder if he just had an eyelid tic or something—surely I couldn't be that dense, could I?”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“She wasn’t stupid, though. There was a sharp, glittering intelligence inside the insanity that had learned early on that it was much easier to get away with being insane if you were also useful and had a little bit of money, and if people were just a little bit scared of you.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“except that if things go wrong in a siege you’ll all die horribly, and in formal weddings, the stakes are much higher.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“She shouldn't have had to be a hero.'
'No,' said the Duchess, 'no, no one should.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

“But as long as they gave us medals,
that fixed it, as far as the army was concerned. You expect heroes to survive
terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don’t ever have to ask why
the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it.”
― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking