Quotes from Frances Hardinge

Some say the favor of the Grand Steward is double-edged. They are wrong. It is all edge, and everybody knows it, and still all the courtiers spend their every waking moment clutching at it and bleeding.

She inhaled a deep breath of fresh air, and blinked up at the high, heavy sunlit walls. I am lucky, she told herself. Better in here than out there. Grizehayes was strange and frightening, but it was a fortress. It could keep the darkness out. Even as she tried to convince herself, however, she was wondering why her mother had fled the house, and remembering her words. You have no idea what I saved you from! If I had stayed in Grizehayes...

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

Another rich man bent on what he thinks the world owes him, and willing to pay any price, as long as it's in the blood of others.

The water had got into the seams and joints of the world and washed away the glue. Lives and little universes broke their banks, mingling and bubbling over and flowing out to join the river. Plastic tricycles with peeling sticker eyes, photograph albums, Bic pens, dish brushes, barrettes, uprooted tomato plants. Comics spun giddily, socks sulked against windowsills.

The female mind is a different thing altogether," he added quickly, "and quite delightful in its own right! But too much intellect would spoil and flatten it, like a rock in a soufflé.

It was such a simple thing, but it made Bear feel less trapped. This was his cool, green territory, a domain of damp scents and mysteries. Every time, Makepeace felt her eyes sharpen , until she could see in the dim light as clearly as full day. Today she dug the turf with her fingers, rubbed against a tree and snuffed at the dandelion clocks, breaking them with her nose. She was a little too slow to stop Bear licking a fat beetle off her wrist and eating it.

Bear] was curious and patient, but his fear could whip-crack into rage in an instant.

That is a judgment upon me for seeking to extend your vocabulary. If I hear you using such words to describe a duke in my hearing again, I shall put you on a diet of dry verbs and water until you have learned to speak more wisely.

Looking at the rich and powerful was dangerous, like peering into the sun.

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?

Her past was getting away from her.

if all we're left with is muck and wickedness and no gods, then we'd better face it and get used to it because it's better than a lie.

the murderess of time.

Not real gentry , Mosca thought with a certain snobbish relish as she watched Beamabeth's guests recline and sip and confide. Just pretty names rising to the top like bubbles in a soup. At least Mandelion had real nobility. Well, at least they did till we toppled 'em.,

The cave smelt of the sea, but it was not a cheerful seaside smell. It reeked as if the sea were something old and evil. This sea licked the flesh off shipwrecks, leaving the bare wooden bones in the lightless deep. Its mermaids were green-skinned and squid-eyed with long, hooked fingers and breath that smelt of old fish.

And that, that was wonderful.

The minister was kind when you met him in the street, but terrifying in the pulpit. From the rapt faces of the other listeners, Makepeace could tell that there must be great truths shining in him, and love like a cold white comet.

Ryan could feel himself using his words to sculpt the storm clouds of the suspicions he had started to form in the library, giving them shape at long last. He looked down at his hands, tensed to wrestle his unruly thoughts into place.

In the heart of the clock tower, cog fought cog in darkness, each biting with all the force of its metal teeth, never guessing that they were part of one great, relentless machine.

Do you really imagine that your scrawl of a map has just sealed the fate of Toll and Mandelion?" Clent asked quietly but coolly. "Madam, it will make no real difference. We are simply not that important. We are ants watching the clash of dragons and trying not to get cooked to a crisp by creatures that have barely noticed us.

And in any case, he felt the strangest sense that this place was his. The sun had been waiting and keeping it warm for him.

There were a lot of other words that Clent used after this, mostly to describe his opinion of Mosca's conduct. None of them were profane, but all of them were long and highly specific, and Mistress Leap might as well have been a goose for all the sense she could make of them.

Why? Nobody cared. With a new and wild intoxication, bolts were yanked from their frames, locks burst, walls cloven. No terrible Locksmith vengeance ensued. The townspeople plunged on with the glee a very young child feels the first time she realizes that her parents are not all-seeing and that plates break very easily.