My face is rather like a collision waiting to happen: head-on I can be borne, but turn sideways, and it is all calamity.

— Michelle Franklin

Never underestimate the audacity of the small-minded and slightly scrupulous. A rather breezed young neighbor decided to have a grammar battle with me. It lasted all of two seconds. I said something slightly amicable, and he responded with, “You sure that's how you use that word?” I put down my laundry basket and turned to him slowly and deliberately.“Do you really want to have this discussion with me, son, or do you want to go home and rethink your life?” He grumbled and vanished.

— Michelle Franklin

No one needs Independence. We all just need tea and air conditioners.

— Michelle Franklin

Regrettable was the gallantry of great men who risked themselves for others.

— Michelle Franklin

She deigned to asked me how ice queens reproduce. I grinned, and her mother looked horrified.“We procreate by way of ice cubes, of course. We put them in our nests and let them incubate for the period of about four months, and when the temperature is right, we put them out to roost and let them flake off into billions of snowflakes, rather like tadpoles breaking in droves from their eggs. And that, child,” I said, with a simulacrum of glee, “is how winter is born.”“Does it hurt?”“No more than the approach of Monday does to most of the world. It is a natural process, you understand, but it is dreadful hard work.

— Michelle Franklin

Shut up, shut up, will you! Nobody minds that you are in pain. Pain is a human condition. You do not care that I am hungry, do you? And therefore I do not need to care whether you are in agony. Nobody is hurting you! Be quiet, be quiet! Reining, fill his mouth with dirt, and I’m sure I do not care what diseases he contracts. He has already been in the water. He has probably swallowed millions of pestilential microbes, and they are none of them acting too quickly. Do you hear me? I say shut up, sir! By my hat—the man makes a noise to shatter teeth! Here, what are you complaining about?” Bartleby looked over and saw where Shandandzo was gripping himself. “Oh, they are only knees! You have two of them and an immune system—the body heals, if you leave it alone! You need not shout about it!” He took the head wrap from Reining’s hand and shoved it into Shandandzo’s mouth. “There. That will quiet you for a while. Don’t you know there are men reading and having their tea? Shameful of you to carry on in this way. The captain only put your knife behind your kneecaps and made a few fractures. Hardly anything to cry about at all. A man has no business crying about kneecaps. A tendon, I grant you, might deserve a paltry yelp or two, but you are alive, and you have your health otherwise— you can want nothing else. You hardly need your knees when you are always on to gad, stealing priceless artifacts from visiting dignitaries—and you are a noble besides. Nobles have money: they hardly need feelings or knees. They have men for that.” He snuffed and watched Shandandzo’s eyes roll back in his head. “Now, if you will be a very good convulsing noble, or whatever it is you are, you will be quiet and make no more fuss about your knees.” He turned back toward the tea house, humphed to himself, and moved to go, but turning back, he said, “And if you make any more obnoxious noises whilst I am writing my notes, I will have the boy throw you down a well.

— Michelle Franklin

Swearing is a currency the countryside spends well.

— Michelle Franklin

Teaching a man how to clean barnacles from a keel is an amazing useful talent, one any child should be fortunate to learn. Masochism is our champion barnacle bully at present. String him under a keel, and he will bring back dinner enough for ten.

— Michelle Franklin

Tea was the great arbiter of many things, and for Pastaddams, his morning cup meant the difference between expressing rational thought and succumbing to the ineptitude that occupied recesses of his dormant mind. Merely having the cup in his hand facilitated the flow of ideas, and upon tea, the great nourishment of the tailor’s life, rested all his claims to rational dependence.

— Michelle Franklin

Tell me, Peptone, what other talents do you have besides erasing undesirables?” “I enjoy a fair bit of sneaking, sir. I also enjoy pilfering and killing as a professional courtesy.” “What a delightfully horrid urchin you are.” “Thank you, sir.

— Michelle Franklin