Home > Work > Toad Words And Other Stories
1 " She brutalized flour and butter, she visited wartime atrocities to milk and yeast. She committed acts of crumpet. "
― T. Kingfisher , Toad Words And Other Stories
2 " That sort doesn’t like to admit she’s been reduced to stealing food, thought the cook. Poor soul! It’s only a few apples. Lord, if you’re watching, those apples are freely given. You don’t hold them against her soul. (The cook was in the habit of lecturing the Lord, whom she considered a colleague.) "
3 " That it was a wolf was somewhat comforting. Wolves talked occasionally. So did bears. Foxes talked all the time, particularly if you caught them in the hen house, where they would do their best to addle you with fine nonsense until they could slip out the door, and it was generally believed that all cats could talk and simply refused to do so for inscrutable reasons of their own. "
4 " One day Turtle had savaged an innocent bowl of batter into something that almost (but not quite) resembled muffins. Her mother, who had a great deal to bear on other fronts which do not enter the scope of this story, except to say that Turtle had three older brothers, each more reprehensible than the last, opened the back door and told Turtle to take herself and her regrettable muffins to her grandmother, and if she had to stay the night, so much the better, as there was going to be a great deal of screaming presently, and Turtle was a bit young to be hearing all the words that Turtle’s mother planned to be using. "
5 " Hey nonny” is a parasite that attaches itself to folk music, and left unchecked can suck an unsuspecting song completely dry. "
6 " (I also occasionally write poems, after first explaining carefully to the audience and myself that I am not a poet and this is not actually a poem and no poetry was harmed in the making of this blog post.) "
