Frances Hardinge Quotes & Sayings

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

Gravelip, a young, slight footman with a pocked nose and large ears, obediently gave a smile like toothache. He seemed less than delighted to have outpaced his friends in the ugliness race. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was why he had become a master thief, to achieve this theft of thefts, this masterpiece of larceny. All the time, fascinating and terrible Caverna had been his goal. Whilst other Cartographers had sighed in vain after the beauty of her treacherous geography, he had decided to win her with cunning and threats.

All along Caverna had been his opponent and his prize, and she had never suspected it for a moment. He had fooled her, fought her and defeated her. She would be furious, no doubt, would hate him, rail against him and look for ways to destroy him, but he had outmanoeuvred her and now she had no choice but to play things his way. Unlike her earlier favourites, he was her lord, not a plaything to be tossed aside when she was bored.

And yet, for the first time in ten years, he found himself at something of a loss. I have succeeded. I have won. I rule the city. I wonder what I was planning to do with it? — Frances Hardinge

Mosca sniffed at perfection. Perfection had no pulse and no heart. — Frances Hardinge

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

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

All these years I've been ... I'm ... ' He still seemed to be choking. 'I'm ... an orphan. I'm ... I'm alone. I'm ... I'm ... I'm ... free.' He pushed himself up on one elbow, staring at his hands as if for the first time they had become his own. 'I can ... I can do anything. I can leave Jealousy! I can break my spectacles and run off barefoot to become a ... a ... cobbler! I can ... I can marry my housekeeper! Do I have a housekeeper? I never had time to notice! But now I can get a housekeeper! And marry her! — Frances Hardinge

Why? How had this otherwise sensible woman who had only met Beamabeth as a screaming purple blob fallen under her spell? Or had Beamabeth slipped immaculate into the world, petal-cheeked and smiling amidst gleaming golden curls? — Frances Hardinge

So she was 'my lady' now, not 'miss'. That was what she had always wanted, wasn't it? Why did the words chill her? There was something so cold and final about it, like the click of a door closing behind her. Her childhood was over, and now there was only her place in the 'great game', and whatever role Uncle Maxim had chosen for her. There was no going back. — Frances Hardinge

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

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

Do you know why a vandal is worse than a thief?' asked the man on the right, in a soft growl. 'A thief steals a treasure from its owner. A vandal steals it from the world. — Frances Hardinge

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

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

I was always awake!" interrupted Faith. "I was always angry! — Frances Hardinge

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

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

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

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. — Frances Hardinge

Suddenly there were two strong arms around her, holding her tightly, more tightly than Triss's parents had ever dared to hug Triss. Violet smelt of oil, cigarettes, and some kind of perfume. Her coat was rough against Not-Triss's face. Not Triss could feel Pen there too, scrambling to be part of it, resting her head against Not-Triss's back.

"You're all thorny," whispered Pen, shifting position.

"I'll hurt you both," whispered Not-Triss. "My thorns - they'll hurt you."

"What, me?" answered Violet. "Don't be silly. I'm tough as nails. I've got a hide like a dreadnought."

Violet did not feel cold or metallic lke nails or a battleship. She felt warm. Her voice was a bit shaky, but her hug was as firm as the hills or the horizons. — 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

In the interests of Truth, I would lie. — 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

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

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

The common sense in Zouelle's words hit Neverfell like a slingshot. The last time Neverfell had appeared before Madame Appeline it had been in the role of captured thief, and the Facesmith had duly handed Neverfell over to the authorities. If there had been any chance of friendship between them, Neverfell's actions had probably killed it dead. — 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

Truth is dangerous. It topples palaces and kills kings. It stirs gentle men to rage and bids them take up arms. It wakes old grievances and opens forgotten wounds. It is the mother of the sleepless night and the hag-ridden day. And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would silence Truth's voice are more destructive by far.
It is most perilous to be a speaker of Truth. Sometimes one must choose to be silent, or be silenced. But if a truth cannot be spoken, it must at least be known. Even if you dare not speak truth to others, never lie to yourself. — Frances Hardinge

Besides, woods made sense. Woods were home. — Frances Hardinge

Desperation is a millstone. It wears away at the very soul, grinding away pity, kindness, humanity and courage. But sometimes it whets the mind to a sharpened point and creates moments of true brilliance. And standing there, nose tickled by the dusty hide of the stuffed deer head, such a moment visited Mosca Mye. — Frances Hardinge

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

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

I generally find,' Clent murmured after a pause, 'that it is best to treat borrowed time the same way as borrowed money. Spend it with panache, and try to be somewhere else when it runs out.'
'And when we get found, Mr. Clent, when the creditors and bailiffs come after us and it's payment time ... '
' ... then we borrow more, madam, at a higher interest. We embark on a wilder gamble, make a bigger promise, tell a braver story, devise a more intricate lie, sell the hides of imaginary dragons to desperate men, climb to even higher and more precarious ground ... and later, of course, our fall and catastrophe will be all the worse, but later will be our watchword, Mosca. We have nothing else - but we can at least make later later. — Frances Hardinge

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

She had told Erstwhile too much in the past, and thus he knew that occasionally she did go crazy. Sometimes it was when she felt particularly trapped or hopeless, or when the tunnels were unusually dark or stuffy, or when she got stuck in a crawl-through. Sometimes it happened for no obvious reason at all. She would feel a terrible panic tightening her chest and giving her heart a queasy lollop, she would be fighting for breath ... and then she would be recovering somewhere, shuddering and sick, devastation around her and her fingernails broken from clawing at the rock walls and ceilings. — Frances Hardinge

It draws you in. You twist your mind into new shapes. You start to understand Caverna . . . and you fall in love with her. Imagine the most beautiful woman in the world, but with tunnels as her long, tangled, snake-like hair. Her skin is dappled in trap-lantern gold and velvety black, like a tropical frog. Her eyes are cavern lagoons, bottomless and full of hunger. When she smiles, she has diamonds and sapphires for teeth, thousands of them, needle-thin."

"But that sounds like a monster!"

"She is. Caverna is terrifying. This is love, not liking. You fear her, but she is all you can think about. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words were dangerous when loosed. They were more powerful than cannon and more unpredictable than storms. They could turn men's heads inside out and warp their destinies. They could pick up kingdoms and shake them until they rattled. — Frances Hardinge

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

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

And perhaps some other later girl, leafing through her father's library, would come across a footnote in an academic journal and read the name 'Faith Sunderly.' Faith? she would think. That is a female name. A woman did this. If that is so ... then so can I. And the little fire of hope, self-belief and determination would pass to another heart. — Frances Hardinge

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

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

I am not good. Something in Faith's head broke free, beating black wings into the sky. Nobody good could feel what I feel. I am wicked and deceitful and full of rage. I cannot be saved. She did not feel hot or helpless any more. She felt the way snakes looked when they moved. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tips for aspiring writers: don't be afraid of writing rubbish. It's very easy to become hypnotised by an empty page or screen. It's tempting to abandon a half-finished work because you can't make it perfect. I hereby give you permission to write things that aren't perfect, make mistakes, try things that don't work, experiment with styles you're not used to and generally throw words around. You'll learn much faster that way. — Frances Hardinge

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

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. — Frances Hardinge

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Frances Hardinge

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

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

So this was a nest of radicals. She thought a hotbed of sedition would involve more gunpowder and secret handshakes, and less shuffling of feet and passing the sugar. — Frances Hardinge

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

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

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

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

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

Mosca said nothing. The word 'damsel' rankled with her. She suddenly thought of the clawed girl from the night before, jumping the filch on an icy street. Much the same age and build as Beamabeth, and far more beleaguered. What made a girl a 'damsel in distress'? Were they not allowed claws? Mosca had a hunch that if all damsels had claws they would spend a lot less time 'in distress'. — Frances Hardinge

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

Kohlrabi's face had no expression at all, and suddenly Mosca could barely recognize him. His face had always seemed so honest, like an unshuttered window through which emotions shone without disguise. Perhaps his expressions had always been a magic-lantern display, a conjurer's trick. — Frances Hardinge

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

For a second, she could almost see Caverna as the Kleptomancer did, a murky, monstrous beauty, smiling her fine-fanged smile as she prepared to stretch and grow, shaking out her tunnel-tresses as they became longer and longer. Perhaps Caverna had already known that such an opportunity was open to her. Neverfell imagined her discarding the Grand Steward like a worn-out toy, and reaching for a new favourite, a man who could extend her empire and bring her new strength ... Maxim Childersin. — 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