Quotes from Frances Hardinge

She's got us, she's got us all. Caverna. She doesn't want to let us go. Do you know what she's like? A huge trap-lantern with us inside her, digesting us really, really slowly, and not wanting to let any of us go. Maybe that's the worst kind of prison – not knowing you're in a prison. Because then you don't fight to get out.

My business in the Capital is concluded,' Tamarind explained. 'Kindly send a letter to Mr Kohlrabi's lodgings, telling him that I require his presence as soon as he is back in the city, then bring me a dish of tea, the latest issue of the Gazette and a bag of dead cats.

Saracen had finished his barley and was happily chewing at the corner of a sheet that had been spread across a hedge to dry. He had once discovered a tablecloth, and ever since had been optimistic about the effects of dragging cloths off the top of things.

I think that when Lady Tamarind looks at you, she feels as the cathedral might if it suddenly remembered that once it had been a grim little church facing down musket fire and a cruel sea wind.

But then again, the dead are often easier to praise than the living.

This is the young lady with the printed heart.

There was another kind of beauty, however, and everyone on the Myriad knew it. A twisted beauty that turned your stomach even while it turned your head. Frecht was the old word, a harsh word ragged with superstitious awe. It was an ugliness and otherness that could only be holy, a breach of the rules that echoed those that no rules coul bind.

I got all my limbs," Mosca answered quickly. "I been knocked and scraped and chased about but my heart's still beating inside my hide.

Fear of the Locksmiths and Skellow's thumb-cutting knife flooded Mosca but did not fill her. Somehow there was room in her core for an angry little knot of excitement, tight and fierce as a pike's grin.

C'era una vera e propria fame in lei, e alle ragazze non si cnfaceva essere fameliche. Le ragazze dovevano sbocconcellare con parsimonia a tavola. e le loro menti dovevano accontentarsi di una dieta morigerata. Ma tutto questo a lei non bastava. Tutta la conoscenza - ogni genere di conoscenza - attirava Faith, e c'era un piacere delizioso, pernicioso, nel carpirla senza essere scoperta.

She was gauging him, trying to work out what cards he had up his sleeve. For now he might be able to keep her off balance by smiling meaningfully and dropping hints, delaying the moment in which she realized that she held all the cards, and that his well-brushed sleeves held nothing but his arms.

True stories seldom have endings.

One of the two of us , thought Mosca, is in a lot of trouble right now. I wonder which of us it is? She isn't turning pale or plucking at her handkerchief. Oh draggles, I think it's me.

Despair was a numbing poison. The moment you decided the worst was inevitable, it was.

She could recall almost nothing of them. She tried a thousand times, but for the greater part that section of her memory was as smooth and numb as scar tissue. Sometimes, just sometimes, she convinced herself that she could remember stray images or impressions, but she could not describe them properly or make sense of them.

What a world this is, he thought. Children put us to shame with their pluck, and are shot in the back for it.

Mother was like this sometimes. Conversations became riddles with traps in them, and your answers had consequences.

Every inch of Neverfell seemed to be throbbing with life. Everything was new, and new was a drug.

Just for a moment Neverfell felt as if there were an invisible wire pulled to razor tautness between her and the other girl, humming tension into the room. If she blundered towards it, it might snap or cut her, and yet she half wished it would, so that she knew where it was.

Fear made everyone look very alive in a strange and fragile way, like the last flare of a candle before it dies.

He did not look at her. He did not need to. Over the years she had built a special palace of the mind for him, and he had helped lay every brick. Now he could feel its golden walls tumbling. If he looked into her face, he would see hurt, bewilderment and the painful, necessary birth of doubt.

Yes, ma'am, I like raspberry cake, only I like it better with no poison or scorpions in it.

Every step she took seemed to show her a new danger. Talking to strangers could kill her. Failing to remember table etiquette could kill her. Ignorance could kill her. And now it seemed that stepping outside the tasters' chambers for a stroll could kill her.

She was trying to force her theory to make sense, but there were some annoying knobbly facts getting in the way. She had the uneasy feeling that she was thumping mismatched jigsaw pieces together to make them fit.