Quotes from Franny Billingsley

When we were small, Rose and I used to play a game called connect the dots. I loved it. I loved drawing a line from dot number 1 to dot number 2 and so on. Most of all, I loved the moment when the chaotic sprinkle of dots resolved itself into a picture. That's what stories do. They connect the random dots of life into a picture. But it's all an illusion. Just try to connect the dots of life. You'll end up with a lunatic scribble.

I should hate to be a regular girl with a sugar-plum voice. I should hate to have swan-like lashes, and a thick, sooty neck. I sound as though I'm joking, I know, but I should truly hate to be like Leanne, so charming and ordinary and stuffed with clichéd feelings. I'm glad I'm the ice maiden. Who wants to be crying over every stray dog? Not I. Scratch my surface and what do you see? More surface.

How can something as fragile as a word build the whole world?

It is true that I can trip over anything and nothing – a speck of dust, a patch of sunlight, an idea. I move through life like a person with one eye, through a landscape that looks flat, but is really tricked out with hidden depths and shallows. It didn't use to be so, but no matter. I navigate the world well enough in my own way.

Let's hope she's like the others, who look only at the surface. Let's hope she'd never think that a girl with black-velvet eyes and cut-glass cheekbones could be a witch.

Father's silence is not merely the absence of sound. It's a creature with a life of its own. It chokes you. It pinches you small as a grain of rice. It twists in your gut like a worm. Silence clawed at my throat. It left a taste of burnt matches.

Wearing a cloak is on Rose's list of the thousand things she hates most. The problem is that each of the thousand problems is ranked number one. 'But Dr. Rannigan says you must and anyway, it hardly weighs a thing, it's so full of holes.' I swung mine round my shoulders. Rose hates any bit of clothing that constricts, but I say Chin up and bear it. Life is just one great constriction. 'Ventilated,' I said, 'that's the word. Our cloaks are terrifically ventilated.

Did I kill him?" I said. "No, miss," said Robert. "Pity.

Actually, it would be assumed that the young lady had no such impulses at all, but I'll tell you something: Chocolate melts on my tongue too.

I like rain and mist. I've never understood why people exclaim over bright skies and bushels of glaring sunshine.

Blast Cecil!" said Eldric. "You have my permission," I said.

Thoughts are strange creatures. They lead you from one thing to another. Sometimes you don't know how you got from one to the next.

Despite her cough, Rose was in unusually good spirits. That was irritating. If I'm to trade my life for Rose's, I'd appreciate her exhibiting a touch of melancholy. Also acceptable would be despair.

Imagine a world without shadows. You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.

Now that's true poetic irony. I rush into battle to defend the fair name of Rose Larkin, and what does she do but fetch Robert to stop me.

The beach has a language of its own, with its undulating ribbons of silt, the imponderable hieroglyphs of bird tracks. The receding waves catch on innumerable holes in the sand. Bubbles form and fade. A new language, with a new alphabet...

The handkerchief dabbed at my forehead. 'Ouch! You'll have a fine-looking bruise tomorrow.' 'Then you'll be able to distinguish me from Rose.' The handkerchief paused. 'I could tell you apart from the beginning. You're quite different to each other, you know.' Perhaps he could tell, in the obvious ways. The odd one was Rose; the other odd one was Briony.

He's harmless, poor thing. That's what everyone said. It was true, but who cares? Lots of people are harmless, but that doesn't mean I have to like them.

There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable.

Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.

He scooped up my arm, swung me round. "Let go, Cecil," I said. "I've a strange dislike of being forced." "But Briony," he said, "I'm so full of good spirits. I could walk to London, I think!" Why didn't he?

Boxing's not that straightforward," said Eldric. "You can practice and practice, but the real experience will always be different. Lots of things are like that, actually.

I don't know what it is, but I ache for it each day. It's as though I have eyes, but there are colors I cannot see. As though I have ears, but there's a range of notes I cannot hear.

That's where proper stories begin, don't they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?