Top 100 Frances Hardinge Quotes
#1. Brand a man as a thief and no one will ever hire him for honest labor - he will be a hardened robber within weeks. The brand does not reveal a person's nature, it shapes it.
Frances Hardinge
#2. Would you have her birched in the public square? Baited by dogs perhaps? Madam, we have destroyed her good name, and she will find the world a much colder and darker place as a result. Even now her father is probably changing her name to Buzzletrice.
Frances Hardinge
#3. 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
#4. 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.
Frances Hardinge
#5. It did seem hard to be doing something heroic while everyone was too busy to notice.
Frances Hardinge
#6. Just between you and me,' Mosca whispered, 'radicalism is all about walkin' on the grass.
Frances Hardinge
#7. The passing seconds became dangerous and spacious. The rules tinkled silently as they broke.
Frances Hardinge
#8. Somehow, without noticing, Mosca had become old enough to hear about such things.
Frances Hardinge
#9. 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
#10. True stories seldom have endings.
I don't want a happy ending, I want more story.
Frances Hardinge
#11. She did not hate Clent for the way he had spoken. For most of her life she had been at the mercy of stronger and more powerful people who cared nothing for her. She had always been afraid, and her fear had made her angry.
Frances Hardinge
#12. 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
#13. Revenge is a dish best served unexpectedly and from a distance - like a thrown trifle.
Frances Hardinge
#14. She was gauging him, trying to work out what cards he had up his sleeve. For now he might be able to keep her off balance by smiling meaningfully and dropping hints, delaying the moment in which she realized that she held all the cards, and that his well-brushed sleeves held nothing but his arms.
Frances Hardinge
#15. He has been dying for a very, very, very long time, and his span came to an end as all eras must.
Frances Hardinge
#16. 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
#17. This is a battlefield, Faith! Women find themselves on battlefields, just as men do. We are given no weapons, and cannot be seen to fight. But fight we must, or perish.
Frances Hardinge
#19. I'm never telling the truth again! It gets you hanged and locked out and starved and froze and hated ...
Frances Hardinge
#20. What would have happened if Caverna had been torn by a civil war, the two opposed leaders housed in a single body?
Frances Hardinge
#21. Since that time Saracen had been making a name for himself. That name was not 'Saracen'. Indeed the name was more along the lines of 'that hell-fowl', 'did-you-see-what-it-did-to-my-leg', 'kill-it-kill-it-there-it-goes' or 'what's-that-chirfugging-goose-done-now'.
Frances Hardinge
#22. 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
#23. My mother is not evil, Faith reminded herself. She is just a perfectly sensible snake, protecting her eggs and making her way in the world as best she can.
Frances Hardinge
#24. This was the hardest part. It was easier to be the witch, the harpy. Being human was dangerous.
Frances Hardinge
#25. Silence itself could be used as deftly and cruelly as a kire
Frances Hardinge
#26. 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
#27. But ... I want to remember this conversation! I want to understand! I don't want to be a toy! I don't want to be a thing! I want to know how everything works!
Frances Hardinge
#28. Every time I do what you say I tumble a bit farther down this well of darkness, an' this here is a drop too deep an' too dark for me. I have to stop falling while I can still see a bit of the sky.
Frances Hardinge
#29. There was too much to feel strongly about, she was stretched too thin, so she could not quite feel anything about anything.
Frances Hardinge
#30. Uncle Miles was napping in his seat, blithely and easily as a puppy on a rug.
Frances Hardinge
#31. Mosca had preferred it when she could hear the edge in her companion's voice. Now she felt like someone who knows that there is a scorpion somewhere in the room but can't see where it is.
Frances Hardinge
#32. Hathin stared out across the water and deliberately let her eyes unfocus slightly. It did no good lodging your gaze on the waves as they slid and fractured. The trick was to see nothing and everything, until you started to notice any tear or break in the rhythms of the water.
Frances Hardinge
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. Sometimes fear made you angry. Perhaps after years anger cooled, like a sword taken from a forge. Perhaps in the end you were left with something very cold and very sharp.
Frances Hardinge
#39. I'm going to get out. Her spirits lurched unsteadily into the air like a wounded pigeon. I'm going to get out of this wormpit of a town. And I will never, never come back here again.
Frances Hardinge
#40. Grab their lines! Stop that coffeehouse!" someone was shouting. "There are fugitives and cell-breakers aboard!
Frances Hardinge
#41. 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
#42. Lost: one bonnet, two clogs. Kept in spite of the odds: two thumbs, one life.
Frances Hardinge
#43. Hate has its uses, but it will serve you ill if you wear it so openly.
Frances Hardinge
#44. But I don't want to be grateful. I'm tired of being kicked about like a pebble, and told that I have to be happy that it's no worse. I've had enough. It's time the pebble kicked back.
Frances Hardinge
#45. Faith had always told herself that she was not like other ladies. But neither, it seemed, were other ladies.
Frances Hardinge
#46. You couldn't plan a picnic without strangling yourself with the cloth.
Frances Hardinge
#47. 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.
Frances Hardinge
#48. Push something in someone's face, and they will shove it away reflexively. Threaten to snatch it away from them, and sometimes they become convinced that it is what they want.
Frances Hardinge
#49. Making a wish is like saying, 'I can't deal with anything, I give up, somebody bigger come along and solve it all instead.
Frances Hardinge
#50. Magic was not an answer; it was an excuse to avoid looking for one.
Frances Hardinge
#52. Where is your sense of patriotism?
I keep it hid away safe, along with my sense of trust, Mr. Clent. I don't use 'em much in case they get scratched.
Frances Hardinge
#53. Somehow the sting of guilt was always more acute when there was a risk that she might get caught.
Frances Hardinge
#54. I lied to you and it was easy, because you believe everybody means what they say. Everyone's lying to you, Neverfell. Everyone. And you can't tell, because you're just not very bright when it comes to people. Brighten up fast, or you're done for.
Frances Hardinge
#55. People were animals, and animals were nothing but teeth. You bit first, and you bit often. That was the only way to survive.
Frances Hardinge
#56. I swam across the torrent of my madness, and pulled myself upon the shore of a new and better sanity.
Frances Hardinge
#58. Every inch of Neverfell seemed to be throbbing with life. Everything was new, and new was a drug.
Frances Hardinge
#59. Again Mosca felt she was up in the rafters, watching the mice. Little mouse, witless with fear. Running the wrong way. And here she was, just watching. Becoming a part of it by doing nothing.
Frances Hardinge
#60. My dear fellow, money is no substitute for the right kind of friend ...
Frances Hardinge
#61. 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
#62. each lady quietly relaxed and became more real, expanding into the space left by the men. Without visibly changing, they unfolded, like flowers, or knives. Faith
Frances Hardinge
#63. 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
#64. There was a hunger in her, and girls were not supposed to be hungry. They were supposed to nibble sparingly when at table, and their minds were supposed to be satisfied with a slim diet too.
Frances Hardinge
#65. The ladies' fans opened with cracks like pistol shots, and were held up to block the stranger from view.
Frances Hardinge
#66. She is the key to this mystery, a key that I will turn, by hook or by crook.
Frances Hardinge
#67. Little god, you see the world through such black eyes."
"Got no choice. My father give 'em to me.
Frances Hardinge
#68. In Caverna lies were an art and everybody was an artist, even young children.
Frances Hardinge
#69. She lay there with her eyes closed, as if sleep were a shy creature that might venture out if she played dead. But every time it seemed to be drawing closer, some loud thought would crash and blunder through the undergrowth, putting it to flight.
Frances Hardinge
#70. I think that when Lady Tamarind looks at you, she feels as the cathedral might if it suddenly remembered that once it had been a grim little church facing down musket fire and a cruel sea wind.
Frances Hardinge
#71. 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.
Frances Hardinge
#72. Fear of the Locksmiths and Skellow's thumb-cutting knife flooded Mosca but did not fill her. Somehow there was room in her core for an angry little knot of excitement, tight and fierce as a pike's grin.
Frances Hardinge
#73. Oh, Neverfell, you're just not made for undercover work. You can't lie, my dear, and I can. Leave Madame Appeline and the Doldrums to me. Stay here and keep your head down.
Frances Hardinge
#74. Mosca sniffed at perfection. Perfection had no pulse and no heart.
Frances Hardinge
#75. Mosca felt something enormous swell within the knotted stomach that she hid behind her fists. It seemed it must surge out of her like a wild, black wave, sweeping away stalls and strollers alike and biting the plaster from the walls.
Frances Hardinge
#76. 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
#77. You, sir, are a romantic, and I'm afraid the condition is incurable.
-Eponymous Clent
Frances Hardinge
#78. I understand Neverfell, you see. For Neverfell, it is as if other people are part of her. When she believes they are in pain, it hurts her, like a wound in a pretend limb. So right now she is in pain for all the people she saw in the Undercity.
Frances Hardinge
#79. 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
#80. It was hopeless. She was flawless. She was a sunbeam. Mosca gave up and got on with hating her.
Frances Hardinge
#81. Neverfell shepherded her herd of frightened, woolly suspicions.
Frances Hardinge
#82. 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
#83. It's as if they're wearing a lie, but it doesn't fit them.' Trista tried to straighten her thoughts. 'They haven't buttoned it the right way, so it's baggy in some places and coming away in others.
Frances Hardinge
#84. Well, you will have to do. If you had died along with your mother, I would have taught the cat to read.
Frances Hardinge
#85. There may be questions still unanswered, but that means that we need science, not that science is useless [...] There are fish in the sea as yet uncaught, but that does not mean that fishing nets have failed and should be thrown aside.
Frances Hardinge
#86. Oh, painted smirk of a hopeless dawn, the girl is still wearing her breeches ...
Frances Hardinge
#87. 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
#88. Which of your victims are you being interviewed about today, anyway?
Jonathan, don't call my subjects victims.
Frances Hardinge
#89. 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
#91. Nobody was to be trusted. The plan that had ensnared her had been the brainchild of her protector, Maxim Childersin.
Frances Hardinge
#92. Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad.
Frances Hardinge
#93. He felt like a chess-master who, two moves from achieving checkmate, suddenly sees a live kitten dropped on to the middle of the board, scattering pieces.
Frances Hardinge
#94. 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.
Frances Hardinge
#95. That," he whispered, "is unthinkable." In Mosca's experience, such statements generally meant that a thing was perfectly thinkable, but that the speaker did not want to think it.
Frances Hardinge
#96. 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
#97. Perhaps illnesses could be left behind, just like small, badly concealed china corpses.
Frances Hardinge
#98. 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
#99. Mosca had come armed with a rich pack of lies, ready to pick whichever seemed to suit Goshawk's mood best. Under the wintry draught of his gaze, however, she felt most of them wither away in her hands.
Frances Hardinge
#100. Saracen had finished his barley and was happily chewing at the corner of a sheet that had been spread across a hedge to dry. He had once discovered a tablecloth, and ever since had been optimistic about the effects of dragging cloths off the top of things.
Frances Hardinge
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
