Quotes from Frances Hardinge

Don't sneeze, don't point at anybody with your little finger, don't scratch your left eyebrow, don't angle your knife so that it reflects light in somebody's eyes unless you're challenging them to a duel...

It was a joke, but centuries of distrust and fear lay behind it. Soon somebody would say something that was sharper and harder, but it would still be a joke. And then there would be a remark like a punch in the gut, but made as a joke. And then they would detain her if she tried to leave, and nobody would stop them because it was all only a joke...

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 don't care about my face! I'm tired of being stupid, and everybody keeping me stupid just for the sake of my face. Even if it means I have to run off and live in the wild caves with a bag over my head, I still want to know what's going on. I need to know.

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. Afterwards, it was as if some understanding of the world had sunk into Makepeace's soul like winter dew. She knew that she would never feel safe or loved as she had before. And she knew that she would never, ever beg that way again.

There was an invisible necklace of nows, stretching out in front of her along the crazy, twisting road, each bead a golden second.

Through the bars he had laid eyes on a face like glass, somebody who could not lie without it being obvious. And he had seen a way of using that very fact to tell the greatest of lies.

People's personalities took up space, he sometimes thought. When they were trapped in a house or a job or a school together, they rubbed up against each other, squeaked like balloons, and made sparks. Ryan's parents both had large, gleaming, hot-air-balloon personalities. Sometimes it was hard to fit them into the same house, and Ryan had learned the art of suddenly making himself take up less space, demand less, so that his parents were not chafing against each other as much.

Oh, why don't we blame it on Pen?" not-Triss heard herself snap, in a voice that sounded harsher and more brutal than her own. something had burst, and the words welled up in spite of all her attempts to dam them. "That's what we always do, isn't it? That's what she's for, isn't it? We blame everything on Pen and then we change the subject. And nothing matters as long as we don't talk about it.

I suppose not everybody can bear to give up everything they have ever known, however bad their life is.

The world was turning cartwheels, Makepeace realized, and nobody was sure which was was up any more. Rules were breaking, but nobody was certain which ones. If you had enough confidence, you could walk in and at as if you knew what the new rules were, and other people would believe you.

You are dust, her eyes said. You are dirt. You are nothing. Why do you bother surviving? Why are you still alive? I am the dust in your eyes was the answer in Hathin's look. I am the dirt that will bury you. I am the nothingness waiting to open up under your feet. And I can hold on longer than you can.

Maybe you couldn't ever owe somebody your life, not really. You couldn't let anyone else decide what you did with it. You had to live it yourself, as truly as you could.

Mosca had preferred it when she could hear the edge in her companion's voice. Now she felt like someone who knows that there is a scorpion somewhere in the room but can't see where it is.

The little pedlar, it seemed, fancied that he had the tools to fix the wheel. The footmen were glad to hear this, and agreed with him that he should be paid handsomely for such a service. There was some disagreement as to what constituted 'handsome', however. The discussion of the attractiveness of various sums looked set to continue for some time.

Mistress Gotely!" she shouted, her voice echoing blasphemously throughout the chapel. "Beth! Alys! Help me!" They would not come to her aid, she knew that. She was alone. But the other servants might hear her, and it would mean something to be remembered. She wanted them to know that she had not gone willingly or quietly. If they remembered that, she would still be something, if only a scar on their memories, a pang of guilt they tried to ignore.

That clock's a lot like the town, she decided. Looks good, sounds great, pretends to be some sort of masterpiece. But it's broken. It's rotten and broken right down inside where its heart's cogs meet. That's Toll.

It would probably be better to have a ruler who didn't sell people or bend his own laws. For the moment, however, this man was perhaps just the best of the wrong answers available.

Once again Toll-by-Night had burst out of its captivity, like a monstrous jack from an innocent-looking box. And this time Mosca was a part of it.

Again Mosca felt she was up in the rafters, watching the mice. Little mouse, witless with fear. Running the wrong way. And here she was, just watching. Becoming a part of it by doing nothing.

She had always known that she was rated less than Howard, the treasured son. Now, however, she knew that she was ranked somewhere below "miscellaneous cuttings.

I do not know," said Dr Quick, "It is a blow to my vanity to consider the possibility that I am nothing but a bundle of thoughts, feelings and memories, given life by somebody else's mind. But then again, so is a book.

My dear fellow, money is no substitute for the right kind of friend . . .

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