Kevin Hearne

“I think he got your goat, Atticus! And I've been meaning to ask you about the expression. When people get your goat, what do they do with it? Do they eat it or hold it for ransom or what?”

“He was a god of rock. He nearly solved all the world's problems with nothing but power chords and anguished cries into a microphone.”

“There is always a price to pay for badassery. Neo was a badass in the Matrix and the Matrix Reloaded, but the price he had to pay was The Matrix Revolutions.”

“Oberon "Holy revelations Druidman! She's on to us!" Atticus "Gods below, I think you're right! Quick, to the Geekmobile!”

“Oberon Atticus "Gods below, I think you're right. Quick, to the Geekmobile!”

“I dislike guilt." the Morrigan said." it is regret and recrimination and despair over that which cannot be changed. It is like eating ashes for breakfast. It is the whip that clerics use on the laity, making the sheep slaves to whatever moral code the shepherds espouse. it is a catalyst for suicide and untold other acts of selfishness and stupidity. I cannot think of a more poisonous emotion!" ..."Why do you bother to feel it?" Atticus:"Because an inability to feel guilt points to sociopathic tendencies.”

“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.”

“Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune!" I cried with all the venom of Charlton Heston. Oberon asked."It's a Shakespearean word for whore."”

“...Having no recourse, I feel back on Shakespeare. Leif would recognize it and understand the context properly. With my remaining few seconds of consciousness, I quoted Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing, who spoke these words to his former friend:"you are a Villain: I jest not." and then I collapsed into a pool of my own blood.”

“So this means you're spoiling me right?"Can't Help it. You're the best hound ever.Oberon's tail thumped a few times and his mouth partially opened, seeming to smile at me.”

“No worries, Atticus. I will snarf surreptitiously. And I should get bacon, because my adverb was two syllables longer than yours, plus a bonus for alliteration." I grinned. "It's a deal. You're the best hound ever.”

“Saint Lassie smiles upon me! It's Coyote, with a bag of goodies.”

“It’s best not to experiment on yourself. Bacon practically froze himself to death in one of his experiments and died of pneumonia.”{Right! Bacon must be heated. Knew that already, but thanks for the reminder.}”

“Before he (Francis Bacon) came along, people conducted all their arguments through a series of logical fallacies or simply shouting louder than the other guy, or, if they did use facts, they only selected ones that reinforced their prejudices and advanced their ideas.” Oberon replies “don’t they still do that?”

“What I'd truly been avoiding was love, the strongest binding there is, and the pain that scrapes at your insides when the bond is forcefully broken.”

“... we banked around until we found a rainbow in the dark. It was on this occasion that I discovered that Granuaile had never heard of Ronnie James Dio. My shock at this news was such that I almost completely missed the fact that we were traveling on Bifrost, the rainbow bridge to Asgard.”

“Bring it,muthafuckas.Bring it.”

“I've often been flabbergasted by modern pharmaceutical ads on television. The list of side effects for some maladies often sound worse than the condition they're supposed to treat. Once I even heard "heart failure" listed as a side effect, and I wondered how that happened. Heart failure sounds like a pretty major event to me, and if you're willing to risk heart failure in order to avoid the mild discomfort of some other condition, then may the gods shield you from harm, since you're obviously seeking it out.”

“Granuaile looked terminally depressed when she emerged from the bathroom with raven hair and, as a result rather Goth by accident. She didn't want to get her picture taken."Aughh!" she said miserably, looking in the vanity mirror in the truck of the cab and fingering a wavy curl near her temple. "This sucks more than anything has ever sucked before. You know what we look like? A couple of emo douche bags.""Well, look at the bright side, Granuaile. Emo Douche Bags would be a great band name."[That's brilliant! It's already the unofficial name of more bands than I can count.]”

“The key to faking deaths is a fine appreciation of arterial spray patterns. I have found that blood bags work very well at simulating spray with a strategically poked hole; apply pressure to the bottom of the bag, practice a bit, and before long you will be able to write stories of carnage and odes to gore.A small fan brush-the sort that one dude used to paint happy little trees-can paint a picture of blunt force spatters if you flick the surface properly. You could even talk to yourself, as that painter did, while you flick blood around: "And maybe over here we have a nice stab wound. And, I don't know, maybe there's a few more back over here. Multiple stab wounds. It doesn't matter, whatever you feel like.”

“I pushed myself forward and rose cautiously to my feet. A draft from the aft signaled that my dressing gown was open, but I didn't care. The nurses could take shots with their camera phones and upload them to their Flickr stream for all I cared, just so long as my face wasn't in it.A wave of dizziness rolled over me when I took a step, but it was one of those gentle rocking swells and not a thirty-foot-tall fist of Poseidon. I could do this. I shuffled over carefully and leaned against the nightstand for support as I opened the drawer. Then I nearly fell over when Granuaile spoke from behind me."Nom nom nom!" she said.I looked around for the cookies she must be referring to and then realized, belatedly, that the room was bereft of delicious baked goods. The only thing on display was my backside, and apparently she thought it looked tasty.”

“I gladly shucked off my wet, muddy jeans and put on the new pair. I noticed she hadn't bought me any underwear; Granuaile either didn't think of it or she did think of it and decided that I should go commando.I tore open the package of undershirts and gingerly pulled a black one over my head before tucking it into my jeans. Though I was now dressed in similar fashion to Coyote, I figured he could keep the cowboy hat and I'd rock the tattoos. Granuaile gave me a good once-over and her gaze felt less than innocent, but all she said was, "Much better.”

“Do Angels have assholes?" Atticus O'Sullivan - Hexed”

“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’.”

“ What's silly is paying five bucks for hot milk and flavored syrup! But now I see what's really been going on all this time! They charge you all that money because they need it for the R & D! Somewhere on the outskirts of Seattle, there's a secret facility with higher security than Area 51, and inside there are men with poor eyesight and bad haircuts wearing white coats, and they're trying to make the Holy Grail of all coffee drinks. The bacon latte?No, Atticus, I already told you those exist! I'm talking about the prophecy! 'Out of the steam and the foam and the froth, a man in white with poor eyesight will craft a liquid paradox, and it shall be called the Triple Nonfat Double Bacon Five-Cheese Mocha!' Oberon, what the F---?”

“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.”

“Huh... guess they didn't want a cracker after all. Another myth BUSTED”

“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!”

“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.”

“She didn't go all fangirl on anyone, but I suspect that's only because none of them bore the slightest resemblance to Nathan Fillion.”

“Lord Bacchus, can you hear me? Nod if you can hear me."Bacchus dropped his hands and nodded."You have never killed a Druid all by yourself, and you never will. Only with hordes of Bacchants and Roman legionnaires and the aid of Minerva have you ever managed to slay a single one of us. Your lackeys may get me eventually, and I know that I will never be able to slay you, but admit to yourself now that you, alone, will never prove my equal. The earth obeys me, son, not some petty god of grape and goblet." I switched to English for a postscript, "So suck on that, bitch.”

“No, they're contemporary witch hunters, based in Russia."The crease deepened. "Hold on a moment. They sound like assholes?"I blinked, uncertain I'd heard him correctly. "I beg your pardon?"Jesus grimaced and pointed at his head. "It's this tiny human brain-I have to have a filing system for all this information or I can't keep track of it all. It sounds like these guys would be filed under Assholes Who Do Evil Shit in My Name.""Jesus. I mean, wow. That's the name of one of your files?""One of my largest, unfortunately.”

“How would you take care of it?” I asked.He shrugged. “I know some ghouls. I make a couple calls, the guys come over for dinner, problem solved.”“They can put away nine whole giants? There’s that many ghouls in town?”“Probably not,” Leif admitted. “But whatever they do not eat tonight, they’ll take the rest to go.”I stared at him in disbelief. “You mean like a doggie bag?”The vampire nodded with a thin trace of a smile. “They have a refrigerated truck, Atticus. These are practical guys.”

“Oh, I know. They’re dwarfs pretending to be elves.No, they’re not dwarfs either.Okay, okay, they’re “little people,” I’m sorry! Can’t believe I have to be politically correct when you’re the only one who can hear me.”

“You will respect my authori-tah!' Oberon said, in a passable imitation of Eric Cartman. I reminded him that I needed to concentrate. Sometimes dogs forget; they just get too excited.”

“You don't need to say any special incantation or sacrifice a stray cat or something first?”

“How can I be assured the apple you bring me is Idunn's?Well, it'll be golden, for one thing, and after you take a bite of it you should feel pretty fucking good.”

“Bullshit, as you Americans say.He's Irish.The Irish say bullshit too.”

“Mr. Tall, Blonde and Lightning”

“Their numbers swell like viruses until they madden someone with a large army.”

“They may have been victims at one time, but what you have to focus on is what they are now.”

“She switched from ecstasy to embarrassment at about Mach five.”

“The tendency of modern American women to exclaim 'Hiiiiiiiiiiii!' in soprano octaves and hug each other upon sight can be disconcerting to those unfamiliar with it.”

“I'm not a proper anything. Majoring in philosophy kind of turns positive assertions into maybes.”

“I tend to vacillate between belief systems. Right now I'm kind of checking out the whole buffet, you know, and maybe in a little while I'll decide on what I want to put on my plate and chow down on.”

“If I waved that in front of a museum curator, he'd promptly lose control of his salivary glands.”

“You will need to make an effort to appear a little less scruffy.”

“They'll have to bring in Mulder an' Scully, because there ain't no CSI on the planet that'll ever be able to explain this.”

“Here is how you know someone has had a good idea: Other people freely admit to their friends that said idea has changed their lives. Most people today will grant that fire and the wheel are the big two. After that, any attempts to rank the greatest ideas of all time are going to draw lots of argument. You’ll have zealots pimping this god or that on the one hand, scientists pimping Darwin on the other, and then practical people pointing at written language and saying, look, fellas, the reason those ideas have gone viral is because someone figured out how to write them down.”

“But, look, it is good to have a dream so long as you do not let it gnaw at the substance of your present. I have seen men consumed by their dreams, and it is a sour business. If you cling too tightly to a dream—a poodle bitch or a personal sausage chef or whatever—then you miss the felicity of your heart beating and the smell of the grass growing and the sounds lizards make when you run through the neighborhood with our friend. Your dream should be like a favorite old bone that you savor and cherish and chew upon gently. Then, rather than stealing from you a wasted sigh or the life of an idle hour, it nourishes you, and you become strangely contented by nostalgia for a possible future, so juicy with possibility and redolent of sautéed garlic and decadent slabs of bacon that you feel full when you’ve eaten nothing. And then, one fine day when the sun smiles upon your snout, then the time is right, you bite down hard. The dream is yours. And then youchew on the next one.”