Franny Billingsley Quotes

...if you don't argue, you can't give in...

This is what I want. I want people to take care of me. I want them to force comfort upon me. I want the soft-pillow feeling that I associate with memories of being ill when I was younger, soft pillows and fresh linens and satin-edged blankets and hot chocolate. It's not so much the comfort itself as knowing there's someone who wants to take care of you.

I can.
He rent his dark tresses,
Resulting in messes,
Thus prompting his L.I. to flee till,
she reached the end of the world and jumped off.
Perhaps I have untapped potential.

Is this what a nun feels when she runs wild? Perhaps running wild needn't mean dressing in satin and taking to cigarettes. It might mean running into the wild, into the real, into the ooze and muck and the clean, muddy smell of life.

When you hate yourself, you don't neglect your responsibilities. When you hate yourself, you never forget what you did

Thoughts are strange creatures. They lead you from one thing to another. Sometimes you don't know how you got from one to the next.

Eavesdropping is such a regular-person activity.

Despite her cough, Rose was in unusually good spirits. That was irritating. If I'm to trade my life for Rose's, I'd appreciate her exhibiting a touch of melancholy. Also acceptable would be despair.

I might be a wicked girl who'd think nothing of eating a baby for breakfast, but I'd never allow myself to get expelled. It's far too public.

Imagine a world without shadows. You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.

For four years I have been wearing blinders. I thought all this time I walked a path of cobblestones, and it turns out to have been an avenue of stars! For four years, my head has been caught in a box. Its sides were painted with pleasant enough scenes, but that I should have thought this was the world!

Actually, it would be assumed that the young lady had no such impulses at all, but I'll tell you something: Chocolate melts on my tongue too.

More important for Chime were the ballads that my father sang me. I think that all of those ballads, the structure of them, the bittersweet nature of them, has gone right into my books. I can't thank my father enough; he sang me two songs every night and sometimes they'd be these long ballads with 32 verses. I grew up knowing an amazing number of stories, accompanied by these gorgeous and haunting tunes that aren't part of our modern culture. They're very Gaelic. I think that was really important to me; I would not be the writer I am if he had not sung me all those songs. So, thanks Dad

You don't mind when he stares at you." Cecil jerked his head toward Eldric.
"He doesn't stare," I said. "He looks.

A poem doesn't come out and tell you what it has to say. It circles back on itself, eating its own tail and making you guess what it means.

Forge ahead, O mighty enforcer of the law. May you be stout of heart and eardrum.

That's where proper stories begin, don't they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?

Blast Cecil!" said Eldric. "You have my permission," I said.

Wearing a cloak is on Rose's list of the thousand things she hates most. The problem is that each of the thousand problems is ranked number one.
'But Dr. Rannigan says you must and anyway, it hardly weighs a thing, it's so full of holes.' I swung mine round my shoulders. Rose hates any bit of clothing that constricts, but I say Chin up and bear it. Life is just one great constriction.
'Ventilated,' I said, 'that's the word. Our cloaks are terrifically ventilated.

I am entirely well," said Eldric, "which has Dr. Rannigan exploring first one theory, then another, trying to understand. But not being a man of science, I don't care about understanding. I simply want to go outside and break a few windows.

When we were small, Rose and I used to play a game called connect the dots. I loved it. I loved drawing a line from dot number 1 to dot number 2 and so on. Most of all, I loved the moment when the chaotic sprinkle of dots resolved itself into a picture.
That's what stories do. They connect the random dots of life into a picture. But it's all an illusion. Just try to connect the dots of life. You'll end up with a lunatic scribble.

The boy shall have a proper beating,' said Cecil.
'But I beat him already,' I said, 'and don't tell me I didn't do it properly. I'm touchy about these things.

My fist flew forward.
"Nicely done!" said Eldric, although it had glanced off of his palm like a pebble.
"Why aren't you begging for mercy?"
"I make a point never to do so," said Eldric. It puts one at a disadvantage.

This is the difference between Eldric and me. Had it been my job to transform the garden, I would have removed the clothesline. Clotheslines always make me think of undergarments, and although I've never been to Japan, I don't imagine a memory-whiff of undergarments is at all À la Japonaise.

There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable. Take Othello. He was neither right nor reasonable, and Desdemona ended up dead. I wouldn't mind Leanne ending up dead. I wouldn't mind exploding her into fireworks of peacock and pearl.

Perhaps you should put your head down. I knew this was the thing to do, although I've never fainted and I don't intend to.

Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.

I felt as though I were a music box in want of winding. Yes, as though I were a music box and the tune were my life, playing more and more slowly with every passing day. Finally, not even I could recognize it. The notes were stretched too far apart. They were no longer notes, they were plinks. I wound down to a plink.

Even a witch wants sympathy.

I don't mean to be ungrateful but if someone's out there answering prayers, mine's not at the top of the list

The first meeting of the Fraternitus Bad-Boyificus was also to be my first fighting lesson. I made a fist and showed it to Eldric.
"Fistibus Briony." I shook my fist. "Eldric terrorificorumest?"
"Terrific? I'm terrific!"
"Not terrific!" I said. "Quite the opposite. Listen carefully: terrorificorum."
"Hmm," said Eldric.
"Grant me patience, O Jupiter Magnificum!"
"Not terrified!" shouted Eldric at last. "never terrified of Briony's fistibus!"
We laughed and laughed.

My writer friends and I talk about the kinds of writers we are and some of us are plungers and some of us are plotters. I happen to be a plunger. I have an idea; usually I start out with the idea for the complication. For example, in Well Wished I knew that my protagonist was going to be stuck in the body of another girl who couldn't walk and that she was going to have to find her way back to her own body, but I didn't know any of the magical mechanisms. And in The Folk Keeper, I knew I was going to have a girl who was half selkie and that she was going to discover who she was, but I didn't know anything else. So I plunge in.

That girl was gone; wolfgirl had returned. Wolfgirl, who was leaf dance and moon claw and tooth gleam. When Jupiter sizzled the air with lightning bolts, she caught them on the fly.
"Nice throw, Jupiter!"
"Nice catch, wolfgirl!"
Her mouth was a cavern of stars.

It's just as well I switched hands: Witches are thought to be left-handed. Perhaps it's true. Rose is no witch and she uses her right hand. We are mirror twins, she and I. What's left for me is right for her; and if I wanted to feel sorry for myself, I might say nothing's right for me.

I've confessed to everything and I'd like to be hanged. Now, if you please.

I don't mean to be difficult, but I can't bear to tell my story. I can't relive those memories - the touch of the Dead Hand, the smell of eel, the gulp and swallow of the swamp. How can you possibly think me innocent? Don't let my face fool you; it tells the worst lies. A girl can have the face of an angel but have a horrid sort of heart.

I know you believe you're giving me a chance - or, rather, it's the Chime Child giving me the chance. She's desperate, of course, not to hang an innocent girl again, but please believe me: Nothing in my story will absolve me of guilt. It will only prove what I've already told you, which is that I'm wicked. Can't the Chime Child take my word for it?

In any event, where does she expect me to begin? The story of a wicked girl has no true beginning. I'd have to begin with the day I was born.

If Eldric were to tell the story, he'd likely begin with himself, on the day he arrived in the Swampsea. That's where proper stories begin, don't they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?

But this isn't a proper story, and I'm telling you, I ought to be hanged.

Secrets press inside a person. They press the way water presses at a dam. The secrets and the water, they both want to get out.

A girl can have the face of an angel but have a horrid sort of heart.

The problem I have telling my secret', said Eldric, 'is that it's a secret.

Boxing's not that straightforward," said Eldric. "You can practice and practice, but the real experience will always be different. Lots of things are like that, actually.

People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don't feel very much.

You could write your way into happiness. It might not be the happiness you'd experience if Eldric pushed Leanne from a cliff, but there's a firefly glimmer in writing something that would please Rose.

We laughed a lot and I grew warmer still, lovely and warm. I do realize that some of that warmth was due to the wine, but there was much more to it than that. There are two distinct aspects to Communion wine: one aspect is the wine itself, the other is the idea of communion. Wine is certainly warming, but communion is a great deal more so.

I think about the Old Ones, that they have a past but no history. I think about the inevitability of death, and whether it's not that very inevitability that inspires us to take photographs and make scrapbooks and tell stories. That that's how we humans find our way to immortality. This is not a new thought; I've had such thoughts before. But I have a new thought now.
That that's how we find our way toward meaning.
Meaning. If you're going to die, you want to find meaning in life.
You want to connect the dots.

Father sighed. "Please spare me these arguments of yours."
"Whose arguments should I use?

Witches don't look like anything. Witches are. Witches do.

My own mask stayed just where it ought. I've had lots of practice.

I should hate to be a regular girl with a sugar-plum voice. I should hate to have swan-like lashes, and a thick, sooty neck. I sound as though I'm joking, I know, but I should truly hate to be like Leanne, so charming and ordinary and stuffed with clichéd feelings. I'm glad I'm the ice maiden. Who wants to be crying over every stray dog? Not I.

Scratch my surface and what do you see? More surface.

Leanne, worried about you?" Eldric punched at the you as though he were boxing with it.

Father's silence is not merely the absence of sound. It's a creature with a life of its own. It chokes you. It pinches you small as a grain of rice. It twists in your gut like a worm.
Silence clawed at my throat. It left a taste of burnt matches.

When you're jealous, your spit turns to acid. When you're jealous, you eat yourself from the inside out

Never punch from the elbow."
"Of course not," I said. "Only a stupidibus would fight like that."
Guess what? I can punch as well as make people laugh.

A toast at your wedding, perhaps?" said Eldric.
"I shall never get married," I said. "But I do like champagne.

It wasn't quite a question. It was more of an invitation to tell him whatever I chose. Eldric game me a choice, and it was this that made me want to tell him everything.

The beach has a language of its own, with its undulating ribbons of silt, the imponderable hieroglyphs of bird tracks. The receding waves catch on innumerable holes in the sand. Bubbles form and fade. A new language, with a new alphabet ...

Death had no lips, but it was smiling

The handkerchief dabbed at my forehead. 'Ouch! You'll have a fine-looking bruise tomorrow.'
'Then you'll be able to distinguish me from Rose.'
The handkerchief paused. 'I could tell you apart from the beginning. You're quite different to each other, you know.'
Perhaps he could tell, in the obvious ways. The odd one was Rose; the other odd one was Briony.

You could at least complain," I say. "I adore complaining. It calms the nerves.

Smash the table, why don't you? Kick things about. It's ever so nice to see you embrace the true spirit of the Fraternitus.

I'm not really the sacrificing type.

Excellent fistibus," said Eldric, but he wasn't done with my hand. He inspected my left palm, the pucker of scars.
"There's no fortune to be read in that palm," I said, but of course he wanted to know about it; of course he'd been dying to ask since we first met. "Do you want the version of the story in which I'm a hero, or do you want the true version?"
"Both," said Eldric.
"Greedy!" I said.

Once we got to eating, the idea of happiness returned to me. Not the feeling, the idea. Would a regular girl be happy simply eating a hot meal with a great deal of chew to it? Maybe happiness is a simple thing. Maybe it's as simple as the salty taste of pork, and the vast deal of chewing in it, and how, when the chew is gone, you can still scrape at the bone with your bottom teeth and suck at the marrow.

I deserved a holiday, and I deserved to dispense with the laces and trusses expected of a clergyman's daughter. I wore my oldest frock, which looked remarkably like a potato sack, and I wore very little beneath. I should never have imagined how lovely that feels. It's most freeing, and it gives you the delicious sense you're on your way to moral degeneracy. I shall soon be painting my lips and drinking gin.

I'd rather be in Hell with my soul and wits, than in the outside world without them.

The only right memory, is the one that first comes to you.

The sea up close is enormous. I squeezed my eyes against it for a moment, which is ridiculous, like fighting a giant with a pin. It comes to you anyway, through your ears and nose and skin and tongue. It is a savage, muscular thing, a vast dim wetness battering at the land and the air and all your senses.

A person might get angry when the girl he loves says she'll never marry.

I like rain and mist. I've never understood why people exclaim over bright skies and bushels of glaring sunshine.

I don't know what it is, but I ache for it each day. It's as though I have eyes, but there are colors I cannot see. As though I have ears, but there's a range of notes I cannot hear.

Briony scared?" said Eldric. "I've never seen anyone less scared in my life. She has nerves of iron.

I turned my peeled-apple face to him. I'd make myself look at him. I owed him that. His touch lingered on my neck as though he'd left a handprint of melted light.

Our parents teach us the very first things we learn. They teach us about hearts.

Word magic. If you say a word, it leaps out and becomes the truth. I love you. I believe it. How can something as fragile as a word build itself a whole world?

If you say a word, it leaps out and becomes the truth. I love you. I believe it. I believe I am loveable. How can something as fragile as a word build a whole world?

I have some questions about betrayal," I said. "Think about this: A person who calls you his best friend, and says he has dinner plans with you, goes off with a beautiful woman, saying he'll be back directly, then makes you wait half an hour because he's kissing the woman in the alley. Is that betrayal?"
"Oh, Lord." Eldric tossed back his wine.

I don't mind the disapproving ones so much. It's the tolerant ones I can't stand, the ones who smile at Rose, who speak to her ever so slowly and gently. They don't realize how very intelligent Rose really is. They're just terrifically pleased with themselves. Look at me! they all but shout. See how broad-minded I am! How wonderfully progressive, how fantastically twentieth century!

Did I kill him?" I said.

"No, miss," said Robert.

"Pity.

I hope you don't mind my joining you, said Leanne. I minded. After all, she'd tried to kill me. A girl in a novel would say it was hard to believe, but it wasn't.

Should I ever again sink into illness, I'm sure I'll remember Eldric. I'll remember he cared for me. I'll remember that someone had at least taken the time to touch my face.

Yes, I'm shallow, I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps I should admit that there's no end to the depths of my shallowness.

I still can't understand how Cecil and my old tutor, Fitz, got along so well, when we often called Fitz 'the Genius' and avoided calling Cecil anything at all, so as not to be rude.