Quotes from Frances Hardinge

Don't trust anybody over a hundred and fifty years old, particularly if they look thirty. Anybody who gets that old in Caverna loses something, and they don't get it back. They can't feel properly any more. They're hollow inside, and all they got left is a hunger – a hunger to feel. They're like . . . great big trap-lanterns, all blind gaping need, and thousands of teeth, with decades to come up with tricks and schemes.

All her life, Neverfell had suffered the dull, embarrassed ache of the knowledge that she was always the maddest person in the room. Funnily enough, the realization that this was probably no longer the case did not make her feel better at all.

There was too much to feel strongly about, she was stretched too thin, so she could not quite feel anything about anything.

I did not see your mother at the funeral,' she said, following the thought. 'She stopped coming to them after her own,' Paul answered simply.

You're a peach full of poison, you know that?" Mosca snapped back, but could not quite keep a hint of admiration from her tone.

Mosca sniffed at perfection. Perfection had no pulse and no heart.

Stories were ruthless creatures and sometimes fattened themselves on bloody happenings.

To be young is to be powerless, but to have delusions of power. To believe that one can really change things, make the world better and simpler in good and simple ways. To grow old is to realize that nobody is ever good, nothing is ever simple. That truth is cruel at first, but finally comforting.

In Caverna lies were an art and everybody was an artist, even young children.

She had needed kindness before, and had received none. Now it was too late, and she did not know what to do with it.

Mye, do you ever think of the future?' 'Do I get to have a future?

Well, you will have to do. If you had died along with your mother, I would have taught the cat to read.

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.

This was thieves' cant. Mosca was a lover of words, and she had a sneaking liking for the grimy panache of cant, and those who wore it like a ragged red cloak.

However, the crowds all the while maintained their mouse-tense hush, their air of urgency. Fear. There was a reek of it everywhere, Mosca realized, in every guarded glance or falsely friendly backslap. A clammy smell, like rotten leaves. And everybody went about their lives in spite of it, because fear was part of their lives.

He was bellowing a great many words that were new to Mosca and sounded quite interesting. She memorized them for future use.

This was the hardest part. It was easier to be the witch, the harpy. Being human was dangerous.

Even when she slept, her anxieties did not.

For a tiny instant Faith wondered whether it would benefit the doctor's investigation if he experienced a cliff fall first-hand.

But . . . I want to remember this conversation! I want to understand! I don't want to be a toy! I don't want to be a thing! I want to know how everything works!

And Neverfell started to understand the beauty of flaws, those places where up and down secretly gave up their argument and shook hands, where compass points spun like a dervish and where space itself was twisted like a wrung-out flannel. These places were the dimples for Caverna's glittering smile, her foibles, her signature. To understand them was to steal a smile, a twisted rose from her hand, a bone from between her thousand teeth.

She wanted there to be more blood and screeching. She wanted each death to detonate before her like a little black firework. She wanted it to matter. There was bellowing all around her, but the killing itself was soft and quiet and matter of fact. Life to death, life to death, with no more drama than turning over a counterpane.

What aspects of yourself would you fight to protect, as if you were fighting for your life?

Hate has its uses, but it will serve you ill if you wear it so openly.