Frances Hardinge Quotes

Even when she slept, her anxieties did not. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

It was all very well being told that she could do nothing to make things better. Neverfell did not have the kind of mind that could take that quietly. She did not have the kind of mind that could be quiet at all. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

It is terribly bad form to admit to being terrified for one's life, but nobody in their right mind would go to a Court banquet without making preparations. One must have the right costume, the right Faces, and at least eighty-two ways of avoiding assassination. ~ Frances Hardinge

By the time Brand Appleton reached the castle grounds, he had acquired a significant crowd. Never in the history of Toll had one man needed so many people to arrest him. ~ Frances Hardinge

But scissors are really intended for one job alone - snipping things in two. Dividing by force. Everything on one side or the other, and nothing in between. ~ Frances Hardinge

He could gaze upon a particular deep shade of green and pick out every nuance of the color. Zeluppian Fern Green, his mind would inform him. Gray, said his soul. Just a shade of gray with a greenish name. His well-trained tongue could pick out every flavor of a sweetmeat. Honey from bees fed only cowslip nectar, his mind would tell him, with cherries marinated for twenty-one years in peach-and-saffron brandy. Ash, said his soul. Ash and dust. Even ~ Frances Hardinge

Do you know what courage is? Not a willingness to fling oneself into danger without proper thought – that is nothing, nothing. There is cowardice in all impulse. Real courage lies in thinking things through, seeing all the risks, and taking them anyway. Lady Tamarind has courage. ~ Frances Hardinge

My dear fellow," he continued more soberly, "If you have managed to complicate things by forming a sentimental attachment in less than a week, then I doubt there is anything I can do for you. You, sir, are a romantic, and I suspect your condition is incurable. ~ Frances Hardinge

Don't trust anybody over a hundred and fifty years old, particularly if they look thirty. Anybody who gets that old in Caverna loses something, and they don't get it back. They can't feel properly any more. They're hollow inside, and all they got left is a hunger – a hunger to feel. They're like . . . great big trap-lanterns, all blind gaping need, and thousands of teeth, with decades to come up with tricks and schemes. ~ Frances Hardinge

I don't know. How can you know? I…I'm a monster. When I'm hungry, I might do anything."
"Oh no, of course I couldn't possibly understand you." Violet's shadowed face seemed to be wearing a grim and serious smile. "I know, you woke up one day and found out that you couldn't be the person you remembered being, the little girl everybody expected you to be. You just weren't her any more, and there was nothing you could do about it. So your family decided you were a monster and turned on you." Violet sighed, staring out into the darkness.

"Believe me, I do understand that. And let me tell you - from one monster to another - that just because somebody tells you you're a monster, it doesn't mean you are.

"just now you told me what you did because you want me to stop you from eating Pen. If you were a real monster, you wouldn't have done that, would you?"

Trista's eyes stung, and she wiped strands of cobweb away with her sleeve.

"Idiot," added Violet, for good measure. ~ Frances Hardinge

I want my chirfugging goose back! ~ Frances Hardinge

I beg pardon, madam, but are you saying that the Lock-forgive me, that THEY terrify the town with a giant cabbage-eating pantomime horse? ~ Eponymous Clent

Who had they been, all these mothers and sisters and wives? What were they now? Moons, blank and faceless, gleaming with borrowed light, each spinning loyally around a bigger sphere.
'Invisible,' said Faith under her breath. Women and girls were so often unseen, forgotten, afterthoughts. Faith herself had used it to good effect, hiding in plain sight and living a double life. But she had been blinded by exactly the same invisibility-of-the-mind, and was only just realizing it. ~ Frances Hardinge

Irrationally, Mosca felt she should have inherited her father's intimate knowledge of Mandelion. His throwaway comments about the city should have magically meshed in her mind, giving her a faultless instinct for finding her way around. ~ Frances Hardinge

I hate you!" Pen's would-be shout was muffled by breathlessness, and not-Triss realized that the younger girl was sobbing with exhaustion and rage. "I hate you! You stupid . . . Why did you have to happen? I never asked for a stupid . . . stupid . . . toothy . . . stupid . . . monster thing. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

The Devil has no better friend than an empty belly. ~ Frances Hardinge

She could no longer understand the Faith from the night of the ratting, who had believed that the world was only teeth and hunger, nothing but killing and dead bones in the dust. Hunger cannot explain why I love the blue of this sky, she thought. ~ Frances Hardinge

In an instant he saw the delusion of his five hundred years. He was not looking into a box; he was looking out of one. All these centuries his mind, his body, his world had been a box of horrors. He took one last breath, then pushed open the lid of his prison and escaped. ~ Frances Hardinge

This was thieves' cant. Mosca was a lover of words, and she had a sneaking liking for the grimy panache of cant, and those who wore it like a ragged red cloak. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

Until yesterday Mosca had been trapped between two rivers, desperate to get out before winter arrived. Toll had looked like her only means of escape. Now, however, she wondered if she had traded one prison for another, a smaller prison with high walls. If she was not out of it before her allotted time as a visitor ended, then the mysterious night town with its twilight cacophony would claim her. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

I find it hard to believe that a lady like...' Pertellis hesitated, and coughed. 'There is something elevated in the female spirit that will always hold a woman back from the coldest and most vicious forms of villainy.'

'No, there isn't,' Miss Kitely said kindly but firmly, as she set a dish in his hand. 'Drink your chocolate, Mr Pertellis. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

Have you ever seen an anthill?" he said at last. "A machine of tiny marchers. Too much motion, you cannot make out the aims in it. But take something away from that anthill – a stone, a leaf, a dead caterpillar – and the ants scurry. You see which ones you have sabotaged, which ones are disturbed and scuttling to prop something in its place. That is what I do. That is kleptomancy. Divination by theft. Find something that is important, something on which you suspect many plans rely, and remove it. Then sit and watch. That's why stealing you will help, even if you know nothing. Right now, the people who want to use you and the people who want you dead will be in a race to find you before the other does. People in a hurry often show their hand by mistake. ~ Frances Hardinge

Suddenly he remembered Josh sitting on the motorbike and chatting with the bikers outside the pub - and he felt a throb of jealousy. It wasn't that he harbored any desire to sit on a motorbike, but ... he wanted to be allowed to want to sit on a motorbike. ~ Frances Hardinge

You know, that's a really beautiful bow," Neverfell interrupted suddenly. "Did you make it?"
"Found it, mended it, modified it," was the curt reply. ~ Frances Hardinge

I don't quite have a plan, but I think now I sort of have a plan for how to make a plan for coming up with a plan. And I can't think about it too hard right now or it won't work. ~ Frances Hardinge

He did not look at her. He did not need to. Over the years she had built a special palace of the mind for him, and he had helped lay every brick. Now he could feel its golden walls tumbling. If he looked into her face, he would see hurt, bewilderment and the painful, necessary birth of doubt. ~ Frances Hardinge

My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

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. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

Just for a moment Neverfell felt as if there were an invisible wire pulled to razor tautness between her and the other girl, humming tension into the room. If she blundered towards it, it might snap or cut her, and yet she half wished it would, so that she knew where it was. ~ Frances Hardinge

Her face was upside down, but he could still make out her expression, and it filled him with a pang of curiosity. It was so long since he had seen such an expression that it took a while for him to recognize it as pity. Yes, it was true pity, without superiority or disdain. Just pain felt for pain. How strange it looked! ~ Frances Hardinge

There was a reek in her nose, a slick dark green smell of water that was old enough to be clever and dangerous. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

If nothing is sacred, then we are all left to crawl through the mud, and there is no meaning to anything. ~ Frances Hardinge

It is a very terrible thing to be far smaller than one's rage. ~ Frances Hardinge

His gaze made her feel like a mouse in owl-country. ~ Frances Hardinge

Neverfell shepherded her herd of frightened, woolly suspicions. ~ Frances Hardinge

Lies can be wrung out of a witness as easily as truth. Yes, after a few hours with the Enquiry's ... instruments, I am sure she will be willing to swear that she had swallowed an antidote, or indeed that she had flown to the moon if that would make the pain stop. But, here and now, you can see she is telling the truth. There was no betrayal. There was no poison. There was no murder. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

She could recall almost nothing of them. She tried a thousand times, but for the greater part that section of her memory was as smooth and numb as scar tissue. Sometimes, just sometimes, she convinced herself that she could remember stray images or impressions, but she could not describe them properly or make sense of them. ~ Frances Hardinge

Through the bars he had laid eyes on a face like glass, somebody who could not lie without it being obvious. And he had seen a way of using that very fact to tell the greatest of lies. ~ Frances Hardinge

She wanted there to be more blood and screeching. She wanted each death to detonate before her like a little black firework. She wanted it to matter. There was bellowing all around her, but the killing itself was soft and quiet and matter of fact. Life to death, life to death, with no more drama than turning over a counterpane. ~ Frances Hardinge

Her moment came. Nobody was looking. She sidled quickly across the deck and lost herself among the crates that clustered at the base of the boat's shuddering, discoloured funnel. The air tasted of salt and guilt, and she felt alive. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

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

A knife is made with a hundred tasks in mind," he continued, threading his bone needle. "Stab. Slice. Flay. Carve. But scissors are really intended for one job alone - snipping things in two. Dividing by force. Everything on one side or the other, and nothing in between. Certainty. We're in-between folk, so scissors hate us. They want to snip us through and make sense of us, and there's no sense to be made without killing us. Watch out for old pairs of scissors in particular, or scissors made in old ways. ~ Frances Hardinge

Humans are strange, adaptable animals, and eventually get used to anything, even the impossible or unbearable. ... Terror is tiring, and difficult to keep up indefinitely, so sooner or later it must be replaced with something more practical. ~ Frances Hardinge

At one o'clock, the ever-logical Right-Eye Grand Steward woke up to discover that during his sleep his left-eyed counterpart had executed three of his advisors for treason, ordered the creation of a new carp pool and banned limericks. Worse still, no progress had been made in tracking down the Kleptomancer, and of the two people believed to be his accomplices, both had been released from prison and one had been appointed food taster. Right-Eye was not amused. He had known for centuries that he could trust nobody but himself. Now he was seriously starting to wonder about himself. ~ Frances Hardinge

She was not undamaged, however, and she knew it. No food or drink had passed her lips, but she had drunk deep of the Truth, and now it could not be flushed out of her system with bitter cordials, or washed from her skin, or picked out of her hair. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

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

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

I trust you, she had often told him. But was that true?

No, she realized, with a feeling like grief. All these years, even while she plotted with James, in her heart of hearts she had been waiting for him to betray her. When at last she had looked into his eyes and seen a host of dead enemies staring back, her mind had filled with a storm. But there had been an eye to that storm, a quiet core where a calm, relieved voice was saying: Ah, there it is at last. No more waiting for the sword to fall. ~ Frances Hardinge

You could keep people alive forever through stories. ~ Frances Hardinge

No, nobody would ever call Neverfell 'my lady'. She was still a 'miss' all the way – misunderstanding, making mistakes, getting into misadventures. ~ Frances Hardinge

You are dust, her eyes said. You are dirt. You are nothing. Why do you bother surviving? Why are you still alive?
I am the dust in your eyes was the answer in Hathin's look. I am the dirt that will bury you. I am the nothingness waiting to open up under your feet. And I can hold on longer than you can. ~ Frances Hardinge

Yes, I know,' she said in answer to the unasked, for there was no time for explanations. 'Yes. My face is spoilt.'

Grandible's jowl wobbled and creased. Then, for the first time that Neverfell could remember, he changed to a Face she had never seen before, a frown more ferocious and alarming than either of the others.

'Who the shambles told you that?' he barked. 'Spoilt? I'll spoil them.' He took hold of her chin and examined her. 'A bit sadder, maybe. A bit wiser. But nothing rotten. You're just growing yourself a rind at last. Still a good cheese. ~ Frances Hardinge

Quiet people often have a weather sense that loud people lack. They feel the wind-changes of conversations, and shiver in the chill of unspoken resentments. ~ Frances Hardinge

This is the young lady with the printed heart. ~ Frances Hardinge

But I'm afraid to sleep!" Whispered Trista. "What if I fall to pieces before I wake up? What if tomorrow I'm just a pile of leaves and sticks tucked under a blanket? What if this is the last time I've got left, and I waste it all being asleep, then wake up dead?"
For a moment Violet looked conflicted. Then her jaw set, and she took Trista by the shoulders.
"You won't," she said gently but firmly. "I'll make sure you don't. I'll be watching you sleep. And if your hair starts to turn into leaves, or anything like that, I'll wake you up."
"You promise?" Trista felt the icy, titanic force of her terror recede a step or two. "You ... you won't leave me when I sleep and go out?"
"I promise," said Violet, with a firmness in her tone that allowed no doubt. Her dark grey eyes were resolute as flint. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

I'm glad we're free, even if we do stupid things with the freedom sometimes. Maybe sometimes there isn't a right thing to do. Maybe there's just lots of wrong answers, and you have to pick one you can bear – something that doesn't break who you are. ~ Frances Hardinge

Every step she took seemed to show her a new danger. Talking to strangers could kill her. Failing to remember table etiquette could kill her. Ignorance could kill her. And now it seemed that stepping outside the tasters' chambers for a stroll could kill her. ~ Frances Hardinge

Sometimes she felt she would like to engulf him like a trap-lantern, and never share him with anyone or anything else again, not even the light. Even his obsession with ruling Caverna pained her, as if the city were a woman, and a rival. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

Perhaps the world has always been like this, Mosca thought as she pushed her way through the crowd. Like a broken honeypot that looks whole, but just holds together because the shards are resting in place and are glued together with honey. You just need to prod it a bit, and it all starts oozing apart. ~ Frances Hardinge

Neverfell was tired, so very tired. Waiting in her room to learn of her fate, her mind kept dropping away into sleep for numb instants no longer than a blink. Next moment her thoughts would jar her awake again, thrashing and crashing and clattering like a monstrous waterwheel, turning and turning without end or purpose. She jerked and stared and barely knew where she was, dream pieces floating like iceberg shards across her half-waking mind. ~ Frances Hardinge

Everything is really something else in disguise. Of course she was no exception, she reminded herself. Everybody would assume that she was there as the Childersins' novelty pet, or as a Perfume-detector. Nobody would guess that she was there to look for the person who had stolen her history. ~ Frances Hardinge

Zouelle had forgotten how tiring it was listening to a Neverfell at full pace, like being bludgeoned with exclamation marks. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

You will find out who you are when your choices test you. In the end, we are what we do and what we allow to be done. ~ Frances Hardinge

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. ~ Frances Hardinge

They understood something together at that moment, Makepeace and Bear. Sometimes you had to be patient through pain, or people gave you more pain. Sometimes you had to weather everything and take your bruises. If you were lucky, and if everyone thought you were tamed and trained... there might come a time when you could strike. ~ Frances Hardinge

What a mind that woman must have! he said with admiration. It was the hushed tone of a jeweller studying the largest and finest diamond he will ever see. ~ Frances Hardinge

But in the name of all that is holy, Mosca, of all the people you could have taken up with, why Eponymous Clent?" murmured Kohlrabi.
Because I'd been hording words for years, buying them from peddlers and carving them secretly on bits of bark so I wouldn't forget them, and then he turned up using words like "epiphany" and "amaranth." Because I heard him talking in the marketplace, laying out sentences like a merchant rolling out rich silks. Because he made words and ideas dance like flames and something that was damp and dying came alive in my mind, the way it hadn't since they burned my father's books. Because he walked into Chough with stories from exciting places tangled around him like maypole streamers ... "
Mosca shrugged.
"He's got a way with words. ~ Frances Hardinge

Mosca felt filled with panic. She was an arsonist, runaway, thief, spy and murderer's accomplice, and here she was of her own free will taking step after weak-kneed step towards the prison. She turned a final corner, and now she could see the prison waiting to pounce on her, crouched behind the watch house like a panther behind a mound. The prison – the 'louse house', the 'tribulation', the 'stone jug', the 'naskin'. It would put out a great paw to pin her, and she would never escape it again. ~ Frances Hardinge

And you may comfort yourself with the thought that you have been the caltrop under her satin shoe every step of the way. You misdirected the Romantic Facilitator she had hired, you turned up in her own house and reported her plans to her father and when she was on the brink of snatching the ransom you careered in from stage left dressed as a pantomime horse and threw everything into disorder. And then, just when she was probably working her way towards claiming a second ransom, you rescued her. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

I feel like I'm holding my breath all the time, never knowing when my lungs will just give up. The air we're supposed to breathe is up above – I can feel it. ~ Frances Hardinge

Fear made everyone look very alive in a strange and fragile way, like the last flare of a candle before it dies. ~ Frances Hardinge

Twig-minx!" it screamed. "scrap-brat! ~ Frances Hardinge

Then why couldn't Father see that?" not-Triss felt despair and hurt welling up inside her again, and it was all she could do to stop her teeth from sharpening. "Why couldn't Mother see it?"
"Because they're stupid," growled Pen, rubbing at her nose with her sleeve. "They can't tell when real Triss is fake-crying, so of course they can't tell when fake Triss is real-crying. ~ Frances Hardinge

Follow that coffeehouse. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

I want to be a bad example,' she said. 'I see.' Myrtle stirred herself, ready to walk to the prow. 'Well, my dear, I think you have made an excellent start. ~ Frances Hardinge

We thought ourselves kings of the ages. Now we find that all our civilisation has been nothing but a brief, brightly lit nursery, where we have played with paper crowns and wooden sceptres. ~ Frances Hardinge

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

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

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

What a world this is, he thought. Children put us to shame with their pluck, and are shot in the back for it. ~ Frances Hardinge

People's personalities took up space, he sometimes thought. When they were trapped in a house or a job or a school together, they rubbed up against each other, squeaked like balloons, and made sparks. Ryan's parents both had large, gleaming, hot-air-balloon personalities. Sometimes it was hard to fit them into the same house, and Ryan had learned the art of suddenly making himself take up less space, demand less, so that his parents were not chafing against each other as much. ~ Frances Hardinge

However, the crowds all the while maintained their mouse-tense hush, their air of urgency. Fear. There was a reek of it everywhere, Mosca realized, in every guarded glance or falsely friendly backslap. A clammy smell, like rotten leaves. And everybody went about their lives in spite of it, because fear was part of their lives. ~ Frances Hardinge

You stole my mother's Faces," whispered Neverfell. "You stole them, and you sold them, and you walked around wearing them, and using them to make people do what you wanted. You used my mother's Faces on me. And all the time you were her murderess or close enough. All that time you were trying to murder me. ~ Frances Hardinge