Jim C. Hines Quotes

#1. When Theolyn died, the humans had built an enormous pyre and placed his body at the center. How was [Veka] supposed to know humans cremated their dead instead of cooking them? She had figured it out quickly enough, but not before Jimar and his ilk had spotted her standing at the pyre, fork in hand.

Jim C. Hines

#2. Instead of Debbie Does Dallas, we get Gandalf Guts Goblins.

Jim C. Hines

#3. Smudge continued running laps, flames flickering like tiny orange banners on his back. He was never wrong about danger, but he couldn't tell you if that danger was a meteorite streaking toward the roof or an amorous moose running amok in the parking lot.

Jim C. Hines

#4. Given the issues with certain SF/F trophies (like the World Fantasy Award, which is 1) butt-ugly and 2) based on one disgustingly racist dude), all trophies from this point forward should be made out of LEGO. That way if you don't like it, you can just make it into something else.

Jim C. Hines

#5. An editor named Kerrie Hughes wanted me to write a short story that brought my fire-spider Smudge from my goblin books into the present-day world. I came up with libriomancy as a way to make that happen.

Jim C. Hines

#6. I had said before that all stories were magic. It had never occurred to me that all magic was stories.

Jim C. Hines

#7. This presents a serious question." They both looked at me. "What's that?" asked Lena. "Whether to start you off with a Doctor Who marathon or dive straight into Firefly.

Jim C. Hines

#8. Bullying is not okay. Period.

Jim C. Hines

#9. The sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who might have worked, having been canonically established as being ineffective on wood, but nobody had ever figured out how to use the controls on the blasted thing.

Jim C. Hines

#10. The more they evolved from monsters into angsty, sexy superheroes, the more the odds of a human being surviving an encounter with an angry vampire shrank to nothing.

Jim C. Hines

#11. Pac-Man?" The beast looked up at me, oversized fangs giving it an expression that straddled the line between deadly and dopey. A string of drool waved pendulum-like from the jaw, pushing it firmly into the latter category. "When he was a puppy, he tried to eat a ghost," Pallas explained.

Jim C. Hines

#12. I have seen John Scalzi's pose-off picture. There are no words. There is only inarticulate whimpering.

Jim C. Hines

#13. There is no right choice. You chose. Your job now is to make the most of that choice.

Jim C. Hines

#14. I was amused to note that even vampires obeyed the unwritten rules of elevator etiquette.

Jim C. Hines

#15. Judge not, lest ye be punched in the face for being a self-righteous prick.

Jim C. Hines

#16. If you really want to kill a libriomancer, hook a bomb up to a big red button and tell him not to press it

Jim C. Hines

#17. Any factual errors that remain are entirely the fault of Bob, who snuck into the offices at DAW to try to sabotage my book. I hate that guy.

Jim C. Hines

#18. I returned the vial to the book, then surveyed the damage to my library. Angry as I was at Deb's betrayal, seeing the bullet-ridden texts was worse. It was one thing to shoot at me, but to destroy my books

Jim C. Hines

#19. Isaac, tell your girlfriend she can't bring weapons into holy-shit-your-spider's-on-fire!

Jim C. Hines

#20. The life of an adventurer appeared to consist of roughly six parts boredom to one part stark terror, or so it seemed to Jig.

Jim C. Hines

#21. He had also jinxed my telescope so that every time I looked at Mars, Marvin the Martian popped up and threatened to destroy the Earth with an explosive space-modulator.

Jim C. Hines

#22. An infinite number of monkeys have said an infinite number of things about the Hugos this year. People on all sides have said intelligent and insightful things, and people on all sides have said asinine things. The amount of words spent on this makes the Wheel of Time saga look like flash fiction.

Jim C. Hines

#23. I've tried to write deep and serious. I spent years working to write a story that would make my writing group cry.

Jim C. Hines

#24. New rule: every fantasy author who doesn't treat horses like tireless hairy motorcycles automatically gets a Hugo.

Jim C. Hines

#25. Story was magic. Magic was story. Memory was also story, disparate events linked together in our mind to create a narrative.

Jim C. Hines

#26. Forget about what goblins would do. Forget about what an adventurer would do. I need to figure out what Jig should do.

Jim C. Hines

#27. You don't do what's right because you know it will work out. You do it because you know it's right.

Jim C. Hines

#28. A hundred feet underground, in a fake field beneath a fake sky, with an ogre slaughtered like no more than a rat to a cat, and he sends us to search for the unusual.

Jim C. Hines

#29. Freedom of speech does not protect you from the consequences of saying stupid shit.
[Blog post, March 12, 2012]

Jim C. Hines

#30. A cop friend downstate had once described what he called the 'pucker effect,' the body's automatic response when something just wasn't right. He wasn't talking about the lips; the puckering happened farther south, and every cop learned to trust that instinct.

Jim C. Hines

#31. Questing is hard. Fortunately, Thomas is here to spoon-feed them answers. We're one step away from him giving them an instruction sheet by Ikea, with cartoonish diagrams and a little goddess-slaying allen wrench.

Jim C. Hines

#32. I hadn't thought to bring anything to wash down the blood. I wondered if they had a font for holy water, and whether anyone would object to me using it as a drinking fountain. Though given that I was trying to absorb vampire magic, using holy water as a chaser probably wasn't a great idea.

Jim C. Hines

#33. Look at the shiny magic thing trying to kill us, isn't it awesome?

Jim C. Hines

#34. Those forced to make impossible choices are rarely loved. If it's approval and reputation you care about, then you have no place here.

Jim C. Hines

#35. Jeff [the werewolf] cocked his head and stared at me like I had just turned into a were-rabbit. Admittedly, this was a tremendous improvement over wanting to tear me limb from limb. Well, shave my ass and call me a poodle. How the hell did you manage that?

Jim C. Hines

#36. Two libriomancers had been disciplined for trying to get an early copy of the last Harry Potter book.

Jim C. Hines

#37. Plans were for adventurers. He preferred the goblin approach. Blind panic might not work all the time, but at least it saved you the stress of planning.

Jim C. Hines

#38. Every libromancer had a first book. Etched more sharply into my memory than my first kiss, this book had been my magical awakening.

Jim C. Hines

#39. The more we narrow the definition of beauty, the more beauty we shut out of our lives.

Jim C. Hines

#40. Watch your step," said Slash.
Jig stopped, fully expecting to be shot, poisoned, crushed, or maybe all three at the same time. "What is it now?"
Slash pointed to a pile of brown, slimy goo in the center of the tunnel. "Hairball.

Jim C. Hines

#41. That worked great! Thank you so much. What next?"
"I don't know. I didn't expect you to live through it."
"Oh.

Jim C. Hines

#42. That is a trial I must face," Veka said.
"No, that is a multiheaded snake thing, Jig snapped.

Jim C. Hines

#43. As was often the case, Magic just chuckled and kicked physics in the balls, leaving it groaning and wondering what just happened.

Jim C. Hines

#44. Bookstores, libraries ... they're the closest thing I have to a church.

Jim C. Hines

#45. My name is Isaac Vainio," I said. "You smashed my library. Prepare to die."
Everything went better with Princess Bride references.

Jim C. Hines

#46. None of us can foresee the consequences of such a step." Ponce de Leon ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back into place. "Though after centuries of watching mankind, I sometimes suspect intelligence is overrated.

Jim C. Hines

#47. I see words, I read them.

Jim C. Hines

#48. Do you know why happily ever after is a lie?" Snow asked. "Because life is change.

Jim C. Hines

#49. A zombie amusement park sounds like fun, but the health code violations alone are enough to turn your stomach.

Jim C. Hines

#50. I read more books for research purposes, whether it's a fictionalized biography of Johannes Gutenberg or a stack of urban fantasies.

Jim C. Hines

#51. Find the stories you love, and don't ever let anyone tell you you're wrong for loving them. If

Jim C. Hines

#52. It's not like publishing is perfect. Far from it. The industry is struggling to adapt and survive, and it's incredibly frustrating trying to break in.

Jim C. Hines

#53. Of course, once you had yanked Conan the Barbarian's sword out of a book to fight off a rabid weresquirrel, "impossible" lost a lot of its punch.

Jim C. Hines

#54. If we ruled the world, I guarantee you they never would have cancelled Firefly

Jim C. Hines

#55. Integration my undead ass. Did they teach you about the Great American Melting Pot in grade school?" she asked. "Some of us don't like the idea of being melted down and blended into stew for the rest of you to devour.

Jim C. Hines

#56. Your religious beliefs are your business. They are not and should not be the basis for law. If you use them as justification to discriminate against others, don't be upset when others decide you're an asshole.
[Blog post of July 26, 2011]

Jim C. Hines

#57. 1. Bullying is not okay. Period.
2. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to physically or verbally assault people.
3. If your sincerely-held religious beliefs require you to bully children, then your beliefs are fucked up.

Jim C. Hines

#58. I have a day job, which means my family isn't dependent on the writing income. So if I have an idea I like, I write it.

Jim C. Hines

#59. Trust is a choice. Actually, trust is more of a desperate, hopeful guess based on limited information.

Jim C. Hines

#60. Smudge stood atop the water, burning as hot as I'd ever seen him and floating on a cushion of steam like a tiny, pissed-off hovercraft.

Jim C. Hines

#61. Prometheus had stolen fire from the gods and suffered the consequences. I had returned the gift of the gods, and the price had been my dreams.

Jim C. Hines

#62. Isaac: "Besides, is it really stealing if you're stealing from an asshole?"
Lena: "I'd have to double-check, but I don't think the criminal code includes an asshole clause.

Jim C. Hines

#63. There was magic, and there was magic. Thanks to Gutenberg, I could no longer pull wands, potions, and light sabers out of books, but when it came to research, give me a well-stocked library and I was a goddamned Merlin.

Jim C. Hines

#64. Like any child raised on tales of magical worlds beyond paintings and mirrors and wardrobes, I had yearned to enter Middle Earth, to reach through.

Jim C. Hines

#65. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to physically or verbally assault people.

Jim C. Hines

#66. Which reminds me, there's a vampire hand in your freezer's ice maker." Seeing my aghast expression, she added, "Don't worry. I double-bagged it.

Jim C. Hines

#67. Can we all pause a moment to appreciate the artistry of that sentence? "Sitting casually on the floor, a guard sat ... " That's freaking art right there! Someone nominate this thing for the Hugo Award already!

Jim C. Hines

#68. Torches," Porak ordered.
"This is dumb," Jig grumbled as one of the others handed out torches. "Why not run ahead and warn any intruders that we're coming? Maybe we should sing, too, in case they're blind.

Jim C. Hines