Quotes from Frances Hardinge

I don't want a happy ending. I want more story.

It had shown him that if you looked at things from a new angle, they could suddenly become unfamiliar and scary. It became important to see things in as many different ways as possible, so they couldn't catch you by surprise.

Well, if you are to help me with my work, you had better get used to stories without endings. True stories seldom have endings.

A gulf of madness was opening at her feet, but there was no other path available to her.

It could be kindness. Faith felt hollow at the thought. She had needed kindness before, and has received none. Now it was too late, and she did not know what to do with it.

Josh never said sorry, never said thank you, but he wrote to Ryan and Chelle every week with a conscientiousness and dedication he had never shown in anything else. The letters were bitter and funny and there were holes of unsaid where you could feel the demons breathing.

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.

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!

It was as if somebody had found a gentle, dignified old lady whose friends were all dead and forced her to wear a funny hat.

The merchant was leaning forward now, spyglass jammed to his eye. Since all of this was a story to tell his friends later, a tragedy was as good as triumph. Better, perhaps. Stories were ruthless creatures, and sometimes fattened themselves on bloody happenings.

I would like to thank: Ella, a young reader who contacted me to ask whether I would ever consider including a deaf character in one of my books, triggering a small avalanche in my brain that resulted in the invention of the sea-kissed, after which she generously became my expert consultant;

You'd know you were a boy, so she would too. If someone knows they're a man or boy, that's what matters. Outside appearences aren't important. It's what's inside that counts—who we are in our souls. She can see the truth, even if others wouldn't.

In Selphin's gaze, Hark saw desperation, terror, rage, and a will as relentless as winter. He had just enough time to realize how wrong he was before she turned and jumped.

The Childersins were armed with swords and daggers. The Cartographers were armed with nothing but surprise, but really quite a lot of surprise.

Everyone on the Myriad was always one divine whim away from annihilation.

and it's tricky because she always makes me feel like, well, you know what it's like, when somebody's watching you and you feel it like dead leaves down the back of your sweater...

How does it feel," whispered Faith, "to come back to your memories and find yourself missing and a dead person in your place? I would feel as if I were disappearing. I would wonder if my father wanted to remember me at all. Do you ever have nightmares where you wake up and find that there is nothing of you left, just a dead person sitting up and wearing somebody else's face?" She saw Paul flinch. She had touched a nerve, and that knowledge made her fiercely happy.

At your age, you are still asking yourself: Who should I be? I must ask myself: Did I manage to be the person I wanted to be, in the end? And how many chances do I have left to be that person?

and at first I assumed it was the radio but it turned out to be me talking and I still don't know what I was talking about.

Josh was the only person Ryan had ever told about the way this picture had frightened him. It had shown him that if you looked at things from a new angle they could suddenly become unfamiliar and scary. It became important to see things in as many different ways as possible, so they couldn't catch you by surprise.

He felt worse than naked in front of them, as if something had torn out his middke and left him a ridiculous doughnut boy that everyone could look right through.

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.

The sad and weatherbeaten violins of my existence are tuning up for the coda of my life's symphony, my hopes and dreams are preparing to drain into the forgetful sands like so much rain - and my last and darkest hours would not be complete without the presence of The Goose.

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