She couldn’t think of much else to do. A lot of the work here consisted of propping things up or taping them shut.

Karin Tidbeck, The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir [Amazon, Publisher]

Hermetic quote Tidbeck Skidbladnir propping things up taping them shut

Consider also:

  1. “one puzzle she couldn’t solve was people. To Ada, they all seemed to be broken in ways she couldn’t make sense of, and couldn’t fix.”
  2. “The devils of Paris would not shut up. They declaimed as they came, in a hundred languages, they hissed and howled descriptions of their hadal cities, and beat their claws on the sigils they wore, of the houses of the pit, and they shouted rather too often to those they hunted and killed that it was from Hell that they came, and so that everyone should be terrified.”
  3. “This is the Lord’s house and I am his representative here on earth, and I swear if you don’t all shut up and behave yourselves, I will see to it that you meet him personally!”
  4. “She felt it. This was not her imagination. It was all around her, but she couldn’t get a handle on it. It was as untouchable as the static between two radio channels.”
  5. “I tell the machine to shut up.”