Quotes from Frances Hardinge

Have you become a zookeeper and a lawyer since breakfast?

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

The world is cruel and makes no sense.

Why should she weep to hear that nothing was set in stone? Everything could change. Everything could get better. Everything was getting better, inch by inch, so slowly that she could not see it, but knowing it gave her strength.

government is to protect the rights of the low from the tyranny of the high and not the property of the high from the desperation of the low.

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.

I don't think about "being happy" unless I'm with you, and then I never am. Humans are never happy.

Nobody was ever ready to stop you doing things that nobody sensible would even try. Mad things. Like jumping into a river, grabbing the nearest bucket and letting it haul you up a shaft not designed for human passage.

Changing a law is like digging a new field. You'll break ancient roots and blunt your spade with a lot of stones, but eventually plants will grow in your furrows, and your new hedge will thrive and it'll be as if it always was that way.

You'd be better at it than me' he told Nettle when he visited her. 'This sort of Unravelling doesn't feel like I'm using a magical gift. Sometimes it's like I'm a ghost walking alongside somebody on a difficult journely. I can point out things they've missed, but I can't walk for them. I can't stop the briars tearing them, or their feet aching. I've never done anything so hard.

She wanted to reach out across countless aeons and hold it, just as its maker had once held it. That would be like touching a star.

So what do you wants?" asked Myrtle. "I want to help evolution." Evolution did not fill Faith with the same horror her father had felt. Why should she weep to hear that nothing was set in stone? Everything could change. Everything could get better. Everything was getting better, inch by inch, so slowly that she could not see it, but knowing it gave her strength.

Seal, she signed. Hunting a big glass fish.

Tell them that the Fellmottes are all witches, and fly around the countryside in eggshells and mortars.

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

The low road and the sea always flirted with each other, and today they were particularly passionate.

The twin grapes looked into the smoked glass and saw a mind full of nothing they could understand.

Back in the trophy room the gentlemen would be taking the leash off their conversation. Likewise, here in the drawing room, 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.

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

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

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.

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.

No." Mosca bit her lip and shook her head firmly. Books no longer seemed quite enough. I don't want a happy ending, I want more story.

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