Frances Hardinge Quotes

Making a wish is like saying, 'I can't deal with anything, I give up, somebody bigger come along and solve it all instead.

I want my chirfugging goose back!

In Mosca's experience, a 'long story' was always a short story someone did not want to tell.

For a tiny instant Faith wondered whether it would benefit the doctor's investigation if he experienced a cliff fall first-hand.

I'm never telling the truth again! It gets you hanged and locked out and starved and froze and hated ...

It was hopeless. She was flawless. She was a sunbeam. Mosca gave up and got on with hating her.

you only had to provide part of a lie. You could rely on other people's imaginations to fill the gaps. She

The passing seconds became dangerous and spacious. The rules tinkled silently as they broke.

My dear fellow, money is no substitute for the right kind of friend ...

In Caverna lies were an art and everybody was an artist, even young children.

Twig-minx!" it screamed. "scrap-brat!

Uncle Miles was napping in his seat, blithely and easily as a puppy on a rug.

You're a peach full of poison, you know that? Mosca snapped back, but could not quite keep a hint of admiration from her tone.

Mandelion spread itself like a butterfly of brick and slate.

Every inch of Neverfell seemed to be throbbing with life. Everything was new, and new was a drug.

He has been dying for a very, very, very long time, and his span came to an end as all eras must.

Grab their lines! Stop that coffeehouse!" someone was shouting. "There are fugitives and cell-breakers aboard!

Night smelt the way Havoc's songs sounded. It smelt of steel and rushlights and the marsh welcoming a misstep and anger souring like old blood.

Well, you will have to do. If you had died along with your mother, I would have taught the cat to read.

Pull on a thread, and you pull on the whole web. And then out come the spiders ...

Somehow, without noticing, Mosca had become old enough to hear about such things.

Mosca had never tasted power before. It was a little like the feeling the gin had given her, but without the bitterness and the numbness in her nose.

Hate has its uses, but it will serve you ill if you wear it so openly.

We're in a nest of secrets here. Don't let down your guard.

I left you clean. Purged of all your ghosts. I am the one who has been haunted all my life. Haunted by you.

Zeal was like gas, most dangerous when you could not see it. The wrong spark could light it at any time.

Somehow the sting of guilt was always more acute when there was a risk that she might get caught.

I'm a monster too. And they probably can't help it either.

Nobody's mind ever remains a blank page, however carefully they are locked away from the world.

What would have happened if Caverna had been torn by a civil war, the two opposed leaders housed in a single body?

She could feel her mind pulling loose like knitting, the neat stitches of her artificial days unravelling to become one mangled thread.

That last extraordinary Face had sent a throb through her very soul, like a breeze shivering the string of a harp, and she could not account for it.

Just between you and me,' Mosca whispered, 'radicalism is all about walkin' on the grass.

She could find no purchase on the older woman's marble-smooth countenance. There were no cracks to give her a view into her soul.

Once again Toll-by-Night had burst out of its captivity, like a monstrous jack from an innocent-looking box. And this time Mosca was a part of it.

Nobody was to be trusted. The plan that had ensnared her had been the brainchild of her protector, Maxim Childersin.

Silence itself could be used as deftly and cruelly as a kire

Perhaps illnesses could be left behind, just like small, badly concealed china corpses.

What's a little maiming and treachery between friends?

Faith had always told herself that she was not like other ladies. But neither, it seemed, were other ladies.

She had needed kindness before, and had received none. Now it was too late, and she did not know what to do with it.

Follow that coffeehouse.

Tea is the magic key to the vault where my brain is kept.

The world is like a broken wrist that healed the wrong way, and will never be the same again.

True stories seldom have endings.
I don't want a happy ending, I want more story.

It did seem hard to be doing something heroic while everyone was too busy to notice.

He was bellowing a great many words that were new to Mosca and sounded quite interesting. She memorized them for future use.

She is the key to this mystery, a key that I will turn, by hook or by crook.

People were animals, and animals were nothing but teeth. You bit first, and you bit often. That was the only way to survive.

In the interests of Truth, I would lie.

I suppose not everybody can bear to give up everything they have ever known, however bad their life is.

Besides, woods made sense. Woods were home.

You need me," Pen explained. "I'm your lookout. If I see the coppers coming, I'll make a sound like an owl.

It has made me what I am. When every door is closed, one learns to climb through windows. Human nature, I suppose.

Which of your victims are you being interviewed about today, anyway?
Jonathan, don't call my subjects victims.

Oh, painted smirk of a hopeless dawn, the girl is still wearing her breeches ...

I was always awake!" interrupted Faith. "I was always angry!

She had big, vague eyes and a big, vague smile, and was always very busy in the way that a moth crashing about in a lampshade is busy.

We always find it difficult to forgive our heroes for being human.

Revenge is a dish best served unexpectedly and from a distance - like a thrown trifle.

Mosca sniffed at perfection. Perfection had no pulse and no heart.

I did not see your mother at the funeral,' she said, following the thought. 'She stopped coming to them after her own,' Paul answered simply.

I swam across the torrent of my madness, and pulled myself upon the shore of a new and better sanity.

But easier, she reminded herself, was not the same as better.

If wits were pins, the man would be a veritable hedgehog.

This is the young lady with the printed heart.

I am anything I wish to be. The world cannot choose for me. No, it is for me to choose what the world shall be.

There was too much to feel strongly about, she was stretched too thin, so she could not quite feel anything about anything.

If you want someone to tell you what to think ... "
"You will never be short of people willing to do so.

Yes, ma'am, I like raspberry cake, only I like it better with no poison or scorpions in it.

This was the hardest part. It was easier to be the witch, the harpy. Being human was dangerous.

Large people tend to have large heads. Men are no cleverer than we are, Miss Sunderly. Just taller.

Over this year, familiarity had done its usual work, picking off the gilded paint one scratch at a time.

I got all my limbs," Mosca answered quickly. "I been knocked and scraped and chased about but my heart's still beating inside my hide.

Magic was not an answer; it was an excuse to avoid looking for one.

You couldn't plan a picnic without strangling yourself with the cloth.

Wishes are thorns, he told himself sharply. They do us no good, just stick into our skin and hurt us.

She dreamed of a world where books did not rot or give way to green blot, where words and ideas were not things you were despised for treasuring.

There was an invisible necklace of nows, stretching out in front of her along the crazy, twisting road, each bead a golden second.

Lost: one bonnet, two clogs. Kept in spite of the odds: two thumbs, one life.

You, sir, are a romantic, and I'm afraid the condition is incurable.
-Eponymous Clent

She's one of my best friends, thought Neverfell, and most of the time I don't know what is going on in her head at all.

Neverfell shepherded her herd of frightened, woolly suspicions.

I can't think straight. But why am I trying to do that anyway? Everybody else thinks straight. That's why nobody expects me to think zigzag-hop.

Little god, you see the world through such black eyes."

"Got no choice. My father give 'em to me.

How does it feel, whispered Faith, to come back to your memories and find yourself missing and a dead person in your place?

The ladies' fans opened with cracks like pistol shots, and were held up to block the stranger from view.

She felt like an amputee, reaching out reflexively with an arm she no longer had.