Digger/Quotes
Digger
"Woah." |
"Other than the time I was a small stone named Edward for some time, I got off lightly." |
"That...rock...looks nothing like a bunny. Neither does that one! What're the odds?" |
"Dip me in chalk and call me a limestone conglomerate!" |
"And anyways, 'Can't carve a tunnel with tears,' as my grandmother used to say." |
"This isn't bad. Nice forest. Good soil. Quality glacial remnant boulders." |
"I'm a wombat, not a lungfish." |
"Well... I suppose no one was ever killed by a cave painting. Except great-aunt Ruby that time and everyone said that was a fluke." |
"We swing pickaxes for twelve hours a day. We're like biceps with feet." |
"What in the name of the dirt under the claws of the mother of all wombats." |
"Just one question for you first: What the heck do you eat? And as a friendly advice, don't say 'wombats'." |
"The thing is, I'm a wombat. And no self-respecting wombat has anything to do with magic. It's dangerous, but mostly it's just bad taste." |
"REMEMBER TUNNEL SEVENTEEEEEEEEEEEEN!" |
"I'm being attacked -- or possibly being romanced -- by an angry squash." |
"Wombat ethics are pretty straightforward, and were not meant for situations this complicated unless geology is involved." |
"Okay. Morality in a nutshell. Don't hurt people if you can avoid it. Don't steal stuff unless you're starving or it's really, really important. Work hard. Pay your bills. Try to help others. Always double check your math if there are explosives involved. If you screwed up, you need to see it gets fixed. And don't eat anything that talks. If it doesn't fall under one of those categories, just do the best you can." |
"I'm not a philosopher, I don't think about ethics that much. They're sort of involuntary functions, like breathing. If you have to stop and think about it, you're probably already doing something wrong." |
(To Murai) "Now, at this point, I should probably tell you about some buried trauma of mine so that you'll be willing to open up to me and tell me whatever. But frankly, I don't have any buried traumas or dark secrets or anything. Well, I'm scared of ducks, but it's really not the same thing." |
Murai: [Jhalm]'s not an evil man. Not really. |
Digger: Do humans ever have baby humans that get... lost? Go missing? And then they're raised by moles? |
Digger: I've mentioned that I'm herbivore, right? |
"See? You're not as screwed up as you thought. Sometimes the craziness genuinely is outside your head." |
"Indeed? I ride a troll back until my backside's been tenderised, and narrowly escape death through cunning use of undead vegetables and I get an 'Indeed'?" |
"What good is a god that does not fossilise!" |
Digger: Can you carry [Murai] until she wakes up? |
Sweetgrass Voice: Kill me? Not even a god could kill me, dirt rat. Twelve thousand years I've been down here with him, and he's never found a way to destroy me. Twelve thousand years, dirt rat! And when his sanity began to fail and I finally drove him blundering up to the surface, what did he do but find dwarves and men and one of your filthy-clawed kind to bind him! Do you have any idea how long twelve thousand years is? |
Statue of Ganesh
"In the seven hundred years that I have been a temple statue, I have never heard someone utter the words 'a god' in the same tone that one might describe, oh...foot fungus." |
Digger: You're a lifesaver. |
Digger: And if I catch them, I'm gonna shove my pickaxe so far up their-- |
Statue: I assure you, I am not hallucinatory. |
Statue: I am not so much a god as part of one -- I am Lord Ganesh's hand, if you will, and Jhalm and the Veiled are his dogs. |
Digger: Wait, are you saying that the slug can do things you can't? |
"I'm half a god, Burrower, not half a geologist." |
"My point, Burrower, is not horticultural." |
"Neither Jhalm nor I wish to have a conversation that ends with 'Because I'm a god and I say so.' Such things are awkward, and degrade us both." |
Statue: Do you know how old the Earth is, Burrower? |
(To Murai) "Hold for as long as you can, but the gods do not doubt your courage and they do not require your death." |
Ed
"It has no name. Its name was eaten." |
"Of course It remembers! It remembers the rabbit It ate yesterday too, but rabbit still gone. Memory not life." |
Ed: Yes. Liver is where feelings come from. Mousie not know this? |
Ed: Demon is big thing, all thing, like wind, but is person, like Digger-mousie. Like is being storm demon, sick demon, fire demon, yes? Is person, but is also all thing, fire person, storm person. You know? |
"But Sweetgrass voice lies. Sweetgrass voice is demon. Big demon, is all lies and hate and smoke underground." |
"Gods is being like demons -- is big thing, not safe." |
"It was told to die, leave no name, no memory, no bones where real people might eat them. But It did not die. It has no name. But It will paint. After It is bones. After all real people are bones, after all names are eaten, someone will find pictures, maybe will not matter then that It doesn't have a name. Someone will remember pictures." |
Ed: Evil is having reason, always, many and many. If hunter beats mate, has reason, always. Mate is lazy, burning food, is stupid, is speaking on and on. Is always being a reason. |
"Skin-painter is fool." |
Shadowchild
Shadowchild: What's a pervert? |
Digger: That was YOU, wasn't it? |
Digger: Well, that was an experience. |
Shadowchild: How are you doing? |
Shadowchild: So are they evil? |
"But what is an evil? Is it like water or like hedgehog or night or lumpy? What does it look like? How do I know?" |
Murai: I thought you were in my head! |
Shadowchild: Am I a hallucination? |
Grim Eyes
"The eaten? ...You spoke to the eaten?! You were its guest?! ...You... you...PERVERT!" |
Grim Eyes: You brroke my mother's spearrr! |
"A friend might put a spear in your heart, but only an enemy will tell you it's for your own good." |
Digger: I am unclean! I practically wallow in my own filth. Dung beetles wouldn't touch me. I'm depraved and unclean and I smell funny! I'd hate to think what would happen to any creature that tried to eat me. I'd imagine it'd be quite the defiling experience! |
Grim-Eyes: If the Elders say may hunt you again, I will warn you first. |
Oracular Slug
"The leaves are prophetic, not an encyclopaedia." |
"One minute we're oozing along, not a care in the world, and the next, every time you cross a leaf, it's telling you the future. It's hard when you've got a brain the size of a pin head, believe me." |
Oracular Slug: Lady, if I was gonna make up a story about how I became an oracle, it would be a lot more glamorous. |
"Look buddy, they don't say 'Continued on the next leaf!' The leaf said 'Bones of the sea,' and that's what I told you. Don't salt the messenger." |
Murai
"The Veiled serve the gods, Honored Digger. Comparative mythology and hand-to-hand combat are our specialities." |
"I looked upon the face of a goddess. And it broke me. And now some things take me back there. Children screaming, or the darkness shining, or the smell--I really can't describe the smell." |
"It may sound strange, Honored Digger, but I do not believe they are malicious. I do not doubt they would skin us, but they do not mean any harm by it." |
Murai: We are gazing upon what may be one of the most horrific divine tragedies of our age, and all you can say is "weird"? |
Surka
Digger: I can't watch. |
Boneclaw Mother
"Only the very wise or the very foolish speak willingly with the divine." |
"Go on. They won't eat you unless you do something stupid." |
Boneclaw mother: Shadebones here has this one nephew, and Hare's Ghost, if I were thirty years younger... |
"I'm not senile. I just talk to myself because the rest of you don't provide adequate conversation." |
"May the Mother of Earthquakes walk with you, but not too closely." |
"Quiet back there or so-help-me I'll turn this funeral around!" |
"Get out of my sight: even your sins are petty." |
Jhalm: I am Captain Jhalm, but I fear you have the advantage of me, madam. |
Boneclaw Mother: Now if I was a crude person, I'd say because I have my teeth inches from your throat and if you did somehow defeat me, all that would achieve would be to make Grim-Eyes angry enough to rip out your other eye and piss in the socket. |
Jhalm
Jhalm: Honoured Burrower. Skulking though the woods, I see? |
Jhalm: If you attempt to harm one of my Veiled, it will go badly for you. |
The Skin Lizards
"We will write the lefthand names of God on the inside of its skin." |
Murai: Wait -- the men whose skins you were -- when they died, did their shadows become deer? |
Manuel
"Hmph. Wombats."
—Last line of the series
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Meta
"You know that quirky side character that’s really interesting and entertaining but ultimately overshadowed by the boring lead that’s got no real personality or motives? Digger’s like a comic that’s all about that quirky side character."
—A commenter here
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