Quotes from Frances Hardinge

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.

Lost: one bonnet, two clogs. Kept in spite of the odds: two thumbs, one life.

If nothing is sacred, then we are all left to crawl through the mud, and there is no meaning to anything.

Hmm. Did you used to be smaller? About so high?' He held out his hand three and a half feet above what now appeared to be the ground. 'Er...yes? Um...some years ago?' Neverfell was not sure what more to say. 'That's...normal, isn't it? People getting bigger?' 'Yes, I suppose so.

She was not undamaged, however, and she knew it. No food or drink had passed her lips, but she had drunk deep of the Truth, and now it could not be flushed out of her system with bitter cordials, or washed from her skin, or picked out of her hair.

But Wine doesn't make anything go away! When you bury a big memory it's always still there, like an itch right down inside your bones where you can't scratch it, or somebody walking a step behind you that you can't look at. And . . . and if we didn't remember things we wish we hadn't done, wouldn't we just run off and do them again?

I left you clean. Purged of all your ghosts. I am the one who has been haunted all my life. Haunted by you.

They understood something together at that moment, Makepeace and Bear. Sometimes you had to be patient through pain, or people gave you more pain. Sometimes you had to weather everything and take your bruises. If you were lucky, and if everyone thought you were tamed and trained... there might come a time when you could strike.

Humans are strange, adaptable animals, and eventually get used to anything, even the impossible or unbearable. ... Terror is tiring, and difficult to keep up indefinitely, so sooner or later it must be replaced with something more practical.

A rain shower was rehearsing. A few experimental droplets filled the silence.

Gravelip, a young, slight footman with a pocked nose and large ears, obediently gave a smile like toothache. He seemed less than delighted to have outpaced his friends in the ugliness race.

Clent sat up with impressive if graceless promptness, snatched his wig from a bedknob, and slammed it on his head back to front. Only then did he go about the business of actually waking.

Night smelt the way Havoc's songs sounded. It smelt of steel and rushlights and the marsh welcoming a misstep and anger souring like old blood.

By the time Brand Appleton reached the castle grounds, he had acquired a significant crowd. Never in the history of Toll had one man needed so many people to arrest him.

Trust was like mould. It accumulated over time in unattended places... Over the years, Makepeace had become encrusted with other people's inattentive trust.

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.

What's a little maiming and treachery between friends?

The world is full of liars of different humours.

Perhaps illnesses could be left behind, just like small, badly concealed china corpses.

I'm a monster too. And they probably can't help it either.

I feel like I'm holding my breath all the time, never knowing when my lungs will just give up. The air we're supposed to breathe is up above – I can feel it.

Wishes are thorns, he told himself sharply. They do us no good, just stick into our skin and hurt us.

There was a reek in her nose, a slick dark green smell of water that was old enough to be clever and dangerous.

Choose a lie that others wish to believe" was written beneath it. "They will cling to it, even if it is proven false before their face. If anyone tries to show them the Truth, they will turn on them and fight them tooth and nail.