Quotes from Frances Hardinge

What strange beasts people are , she thought. We adjust to everything so quickly. Perhaps we would even get used to Hell.

She could feel her mind pulling loose like knitting, the neat stitches of her artificial days unravelling to become one mangled thread.

He has been dying for a very, very, very long time, and his span came to an end as all eras must.

And below them, Toll-by-Night set about folding itself away, like a stilt-legged monster into a closet. Its inhabitants crept back into the unwanted places, the crannies and cellars and forgotten attics, and locked themselves in. A bugle blew. A silver jingling swept through the town, sealing away all bad reputations and bitter-tasting names. Another bugle sounded. And day swept in like a landlord, not knowing that it was only a guest in night's town.

Neverfell shepherded her herd of frightened, woolly suspicions.

Names were important. You carried your name like a brand. You never lied about it, for fear of angering the god under which you were born.

Until yesterday Mosca had been trapped between two rivers, desperate to get out before winter arrived. Toll had looked like her only means of escape. Now, however, she wondered if she had traded one prison for another, a smaller prison with high walls. If she was not out of it before her allotted time as a visitor ended, then the mysterious night town with its twilight cacophony would claim her.

Why must we look inward, and only inward, as if the world ends where the sky begins?

We' was such a comforting word. 'We' meant weathering things together. Camaraderie. Safety in numbers. All the things that Havoc and Jade and Perch had talked about. And yet Mosca had seen all these things collapse within an hour of the dusk bugle.

Mosca had never tasted power before. It was a little like the feeling the gin had given her, but without the bitterness and the numbness in her nose.

Irrationally, Mosca felt she should have inherited her father's intimate knowledge of Mandelion. His throwaway comments about the city should have magically meshed in her mind, giving her a faultless instinct for finding her way around.

Little god, you see the world through such black eyes." "Got no choice. My father give 'em to me.

Kohlrabi's face had no expression at all, and suddenly Mosca could barely recognize him. His face had always seemed so honest, like an unshuttered window through which emotions shone without disguise. Perhaps his expressions had always been a magic-lantern display, a conjurer's trick.

Besides, woods made sense. Woods were home.

Lord Fellmotte was not a man. He was an ancient committee. A parliament of deathly rooks in a dying tree.

Hathin stared out across the water and deliberately let her eyes unfocus slightly. It did no good lodging your gaze on the waves as they slid and fractured. The trick was to see nothing and everything, until you started to notice any tear or break in the rhythms of the water.

Grab their lines! Stop that coffeehouse!" someone was shouting. "There are fugitives and cell-breakers aboard!

So she was 'my lady' now, not 'miss'. That was what she had always wanted, wasn't it? Why did the words chill her? There was something so cold and final about it, like the click of a door closing behind her. Her childhood was over, and now there was only her place in the 'great game', and whatever role Uncle Maxim had chosen for her. There was no going back.

The ubiquitous palace servants opened the door for Neverfell as she approached, and Zouelle was suddenly stung by the thought of the guards perhaps calling Neverfell 'my lady' the same way they had addressed her. Immediately the honour of that title cheapened in her mind, like a piece of tinsel that had adorned the neck of a puppy or piglet.

There is always hope. There are always chances.

Who am I? The shell-selling Lace girl, the attendant of Lady Arilou, Mother Govrie's other daughter, the thing of dust, the victim, the revenger, the diplomat, the crowd-witch, the killer, the rescuer, the pirate? I am anything I wish to be. The world cannot choose for me. No, it is for me to choose what the world shall be.

You must not love them," said Quest gently. "It is easy to love power, because power tells you it is majesty and beauty and greatness. But the gods were monsters. Do not even love their memory.

Well, what do you think would happen to your face if you found out something you couldn't forget? Something terrible that changed the way you thought, and would show through your expressions forever?' Leodora leaned forward and spoke in a low, gentle tone. 'Your face would be spoilt. And then there would be no point to you any more.

But I'm afraid to sleep!" whispered Trista. "What if I fall to pieces before I wake up? What if tomorrow morning I'm just a pile of leaves and sticks tucked under a blanket? What if this is the last time I've got left, and I waste it all being asleep, then wake up dead?