Quotes from Frances Hardinge

If someone throws aside their pride and begs with all their heart, and if they do so in vain, then they are never quite the same person afterwards. Something in them dies, and something else comes to life.

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

You will find out who you are when your choices test you. In the end, we are what we do and what we allow to be done.

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

I want my chirfugging goose back!

If you want someone to tell you what to think," the phantom answered briskly, without looking up, "you will never be short of people willing to do so." . . . "Come now," he said at last, "you can hardly claim that I have left you ignorant. I taught you to read, did I not?

Since that time Saracen had been making a name for himself. That name was not 'Saracen'. Indeed the name was more along the lines of 'that hell-fowl', 'did-you-see-what-it-did-to-my-leg', 'kill-it-kill-it-there-it-goes' or 'what's-that-chirfugging-goose-done-now'.

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.

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.

It was all very well being told that she could do nothing to make things better. Neverfell did not have the kind of mind that could take that quietly. She did not have the kind of mind that could be quiet at all.

She lay there with her eyes closed, as if sleep were a shy creature that might venture out if she played dead. But every time it seemed to be drawing closer, some loud thought would crash and blunder through the undergrowth, putting it to flight.

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

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.

Zouelle had forgotten how tiring it was listening to a Neverfell at full pace, like being bludgeoned with exclamation marks.

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.

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.

I'm glad we're free, even if we do stupid things with the freedom sometimes. Maybe sometimes there isn't a right thing to do. Maybe there's just lots of wrong answers, and you have to pick one you can bear – something that doesn't break who you are.

My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic.

It did seem hard to be doing something heroic while everyone was too busy to notice.

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.

It is dangerous to lock oneself away and lose track of what is happening outside.

Magic" was not an answer; it was an excuse to avoid looking for one.

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.

Change is necessary and, deny it as we may, in the end change is always inevitable.