Kevin Hearne Quotes

PR guys get paid to make people believe that a pile of shit is an investment in soil fertility. Professional liars.”“Ah!” Manannan’s expression lit with comprehension. “They are politicians?

Kevin Hearne

The essence of Druidry is training the mind to both handle contradictory input and construct contradictory out

Kevin Hearne

For me, the times I always regret are missed opportunities to say farewell to good people, to wish them long life and say to them in all sincerity, "You build and do not destroy; you sow goodwill and reap it; smiles bloom in the wake of your passing, and I will keep your kindness in trust and share it as occasion arises, so that your life will be a quenching draught of calm in a land of drought and stress." Too often I never get to say that when it should be said. Instead, I leave them with the equivalent of a "Later, dude!" only to discover there would be no later for us.

Kevin Hearne

She'd made life poignant for the Irish. The terror she inspired gave peace its serenity; the pain she caused gave health its lustre; her failure to love made me grateful for my ability to do so, and I realized, far too late, that though I never did or could have loved her as she might have wished, I should have loved her more.

Kevin Hearne

The answer to enemies who heal annoyingly fast is always, always decapitation. That is why swords will never go out of style.

Kevin Hearne

And there were carved hearts in the trunks of trees with the initials of couples who felt there was no more romantic thing they could do to celebrate their love than scar the local plant life

Kevin Hearne

May harmony find you" Atticus

Kevin Hearne

Morrigan "What are guilt ferrets:"Atticus "They're bastards. They cling to your neck and tickle and bite and generally make you miserable, which is a pretty good trick for a metaphor." They were also impervious to logic, perhaps their most diabolical power.

Kevin Hearne

Hamlet promised himself he’d throw down afterward, but I think perhaps when he said, “From this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!” the limits of blank verse weakened his resolve somehow. If he’d been free to follow the dictates of his conscience rather than the pen of Shakespeare, perhaps he would have abandoned verse altogether, like me, and contented himself with this instead: “Bring it, muthafuckas. Bring it.

Kevin Hearne

When people ask how old I am, I just tell them twenty-one, and if they assume I mean years instead of decades or centuries, then that can't be my fault, can it?

Kevin Hearne

This bastard is so guilty he already has his lawyer here.

Kevin Hearne

When in doubt, know your way out, I always say.""I thought you always said, 'When in doubt, blame the dark elves.'""Well, yeah, that too.""I don't think those are very practical solutions to doubt," Oberon said. "They don't leave you feeling satisfied. 'When in doubt, eat your neighbor's lunch' is better, because then you would at least be full.

Kevin Hearne

Gods can screw anything and anybody. For reference, see history.Atticus O'Sullivan

Kevin Hearne

Jesus "...It sounds like these guys would be filed under Assholes Who do Evil Shit in My Name.

Kevin Hearne

come humans, fulfill your evolutionary purpose adn build your hound a fire." Oberon

Kevin Hearne

But there was no going back to that idyllic time when only one god wanted to kill me.

Kevin Hearne

It's not like the Middle Ages, when you had the Church and the aristocracy keeping everything nice and stagnant.

Kevin Hearne

Revenge and rational thought never sleep together.

Kevin Hearne

When you're driving, you don't focus on everything at once, but you have peripheral awareness of it, right? You focus on what you need to at any given moment, whether it's the car in front of you, the jackass in the lifted truck passing you, or the sirens behind you, whatever. Everything exists, everything is there, but you don't have to see it all at once. Does that help? You don't have to see all the bindings you're seeing right now. Just focus on the outlines of the physical stuff you saw before.

Kevin Hearne

Druids were supposed to be forces of preservation, not destruction, and I could not dance around the fact that my stupid pride had turned me into a misbegotten cockwaffle.

Kevin Hearne

I forgot how good it feels to be rooted. And to be rooted is not the same thing at all as being tied down. To be rooted is to say, here I am nourished and here will I grow, for I have found a place where every sunrise shows me how to be more than what I was yesterday, and I need not wander to feel the wonder of my blessing. And when you are rooted, defending that space ceases to be an obligation or a duty and becomes more of a desire.

Kevin Hearne

The point is, Mrs. MacDonagh, that the universe is exactly the size that your soul can encompass. Some people live in extremely small worlds, and some live in a world of infinite possibility.

Kevin Hearne

When in doubt, know your way out, I always say.""I thought you always said, 'When in doubt, blame the dark elves.'""Well, yeah, that

Kevin Hearne

Not everyone can be bribed with meat, Oberon." "They Can't? Oh! you mean they're vegetarian.""No, they eat meat. It just doesn't sway their decision making process." "Well that... that's just wrong, Atticus!Are they Monsters? It's like they have no moral center!

Kevin Hearne

No. See, when you throw up you're vomiting, but when you throw down you're starting a fight, as in throwing down the gauntlet.""Ohhhh," he said. "I thought you were speaking literally.""I do beg your pardon. Let's literally throw up, but figuratively throw down.

Kevin Hearne

You don't even know if she really likes you, Oberon said as we exited and I unlocked my bike. She could be doing her customer service routine and stringing you along in hopes of a big tip the next time you come in. With dogs you just go up and smell their asses and you know where you stand, it's so much easier. Why can't humans do that?

Kevin Hearne

I jumped up and down and swore violently in seventeen languages.

Kevin Hearne

No matter how old I get, I keep running into people who are smarter, nobler, and kinder. I really ought to start listening to them and telling my pride to shut up. I had gods tell me not to go to Asgard. I had witches tell me not to go to Flagstaff. You told me this plan wouldn't work. But I barreled ahead anyway for my own reasons. I still have plenty of growing to do.

Kevin Hearne

Oberon’s been kidnapped along with one of the werewolves, and that’s why we’re all so upset. We’ll talk more tomorrow, and I promise to answer all your questions if I survive the night,” I said. The widow’s eyebrows raised. “Ye’ve got all these nasty pooches to run around with and ye still might die?” “I’m going to go fight with a god, some demons, and a coven of witches who all want to kill me,” I said, “so it’s a distinct possibility.” “Are y’goin’ t’kill ’em back?” “I’d certainly like to.” “Attaboy,” the widow chuckled. “Off y’go, then. Kill every last one o’ the bastards and call me in the mornin’.

Kevin Hearne

Saying good-bye properly afforded me a measure of peace. It was a binding of a different sort, absent of the earth's power, but still hard proof that there is magic yet in the world.

Kevin Hearne

The color palette is confined to that of a Gustave Dore' engraving, greys and blacks, and subtle shadings of these rendered in harrowing crosshatches and highlighted with sudden glaring areas of nothingness, like splotches of vitiligo sent to haunt the dead with memories of what real light did to the eyes.

Kevin Hearne

But in doing so---moving forward...---he's still dealing with the past. It's always strung out behind us, innit, attached to our arses like a roll of toilet paper we trail out of the bathroom, pointing the way to the giant shite we just took. It doesn't matter if we flushed it down; Everyone still knows what we did there. So its fine to say it's all done and you have no connection with the past, that you're a new person every second, but silly in my view to pretend that person isn't made of the old one.

Kevin Hearne

Turns out that once you kill a god, people want to talk to you. Paranormal insurance salesmen with special "godslayer" term life policies. Charlatan's with "godproof" armor and extraplanar safe houses for rent. But most notably, other gods...

Kevin Hearne

The wind and the grass and something in the sky, sun, or moon, shining on our backs as we run: They are gifts that humans toss away like socks on Christmas morning, because we see them every day and don't think of them as gifts anymore. But new socks are always better than old socks. And the wind and grass and sky, I think, are better seen with new eyes than jaded ones. I hope my eyes will never grow old.

Kevin Hearne

I’ve never run this far before," he said at one point. "Or this fast for so long. It’s better than sticking your head out a car window, that’s for sure."My theory is that Oberon might be a master of Tao. He always sees what we filter out. The wind and the grass and something in the sky, sun or moon, shining on our backs as we run: They are gifts that humans toss away like socks on Christmas morning, because we see them every day and don’t think of them as gifts anymore. But new socks are always better than old socks. And the wind and grass and sky, I think, are better seen with new eyes than jaded ones. I hope my eyes will never grow old.

Kevin Hearne

I dispelled my invisibility for a few seconds in his full view, a finger resting provocatively on my lower lip, giving him a come-hither look under a streetlight. His jaw and the bottle of Żubrówka dropped at the same time. It shattered, drawing his eyes to the sidewalk, and I took the opportunity afforded by his distraction to disappear again."That was mean," Oberon said, watching the man look wildly around for me and pawing at his eyes as if to clear them.Why? I asked. I’ve done him no harm."Yes, you have. You will haunt him for the rest of his life. I know from experience."You’re haunted by someone flashing you on a street corner?"No. It was a dog park. Atticus and I were just arriving and she was leaving."Oh, here we go."She was so fit and her coat was tightly curled and she had a perfect pouf on the end of her tail like a tennis ball. I saw her for maybe five seconds, until she hopped into a Honda and her human drove her away. And now I can’t see a Honda without seeing her."But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Kind of romantic? A vision of perfection you can treasure forever, unspoiled by reality."Well, I don’t know. In reality I’d like to try spoiling her, if she was in the mood."Look, Oberon, that man is lonely. He’s too skinny and sweaty, and I’m willing to bet you five cows that he’s socially awkward or he wouldn’t be staggering drunk at this hour. But now, for the rest of his life, he will remember the na**d woman on the street who looked at him with desire. When people treat him like something untouchable, he will have that memory to comfort him."Or obsess over. What if he starts wandering the streets every night looking for you?"Then he’s misunderstood the nature of beauty. It doesn’t stay, except in our minds."Oh! I think I see. That’s true, Clever Girl! Sausage never stays, because I eat it, but it’s always beautiful in my mind.

Kevin Hearne

I don’t remember the whole thing, because it was very long, but Atticus recited it for me once, and there was a line that went like this: “Cry ham hock and let slip the hogs of war!” I know you might not agree, but for me that was the best thing Shakespeare ever wrote."You mean, “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war” from Julius Caesar?"No, I don’t think that’s it. There was ham in there; I’m sure he was talking about ham. They were going to battle hunger."I think you might have been hungry when you heard it, Oberon.

Kevin Hearne

The gods damn you, look what you've done! If I want to grow this back, I'll have to endure the most terrifying sex imaginable! Gaahhhhhhh!

Kevin Hearne

People used to say obvious things ironically or as a form of understatement, but in the last few decades they seem to say it with a sense of discovery, and it worries me.

Kevin Hearne

Peace be with you," I said, and as I turned to resume my journey with Coyote, I added under my breath, "and asskicking be with me.

Kevin Hearne

Look, I don't know what you are, but you're more than a geologist, if you are one at all. I've met lots of geologists on different projects like this, and they're all tiny sunburned men with fetishes for geodes. They wear floppy hats and carry baggies for soil samples around with them. ... And geologists don't make rocks disappear like you did the other night. They keep them and build little shrines to them.

Kevin Hearne

When he said to give him the sword, I don’t think he meant for you to stick it in his guts.

Kevin Hearne

Yer a good lad, Atticus, mowin’ me lawn and killin’ what Brits come around.

Kevin Hearne