Quotes from Frances Hardinge

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Ordinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone ran and hid in their houses, but a very short while later, if all seemed quiet, they came out again and started selling each other potatoes.

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

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.

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

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.

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.