Quotes from Franny Billingsley

The sea up close is enormous. I squeezed my eyes against it for a moment, which is ridiculous, like fighting a giant with a pin. It comes to you anyway, through your ears and nose and skin and tongue. It is a savage, muscular thing, a vast dim wetness battering at the land and the air and all your senses.

You can outrun your memories, but sometime, you will have to stop. And when you do, there will always be Stepmother, waiting to be remembered.

Sometimes, of course, the sister's the wicked one, not the stepmother.

Eldric wore his lazy lion's smile. He didn't mind what he was called. He was a sticks-and-stones sort of person.

If there were such a thing as a vampire-puppy-dog, it would be Cecil. Big pleading eyes, asking for an ear-scratch and a nice warm bowl of blood.

A toast at your wedding, perhaps?" said Eldric. "I shall never get married," I said. "But I do like champagne.

Darling! Had they darlinged each other when they were here? I imagined them, magnificent on horseback, tossing darlings to and fro.

Once we got to eating, the idea of happiness returned to me. Not the feeling, the idea. Would a regular girl be happy simply eating a hot meal with a great deal of chew to it? Maybe happiness is a simple thing. Maybe it's as simple as the salty taste of pork, and the vast deal of chewing in it, and how, when the chew is gone, you can still scrape at the bone with your bottom teeth and suck at the marrow.

It never ends, this business of being a lady.

Some secrets are wrong and ought to be told.

The problem I have telling my secret', said Eldric, 'is that it's a secret.

The only right memory, is the one that first comes to you.

Forge ahead, O mighty enforcer of the law. May you be stout of heart and eardrum.

Briony scared?" said Eldric. "I've never seen anyone less scared in my life. She has nerves of iron.

I turned my peeled-apple face to him. I'd make myself look at him. I owed him that. His touch lingered on my neck as though he'd left a handprint of melted light.

Is this what a nun feels when she runs wild? Perhaps running wild needn't mean dressing in satin and taking to cigarettes. It might mean running into the wild, into the real, into the ooze and muck and the clean, muddy smell of life.

Poor Cecil. It's hard to be a devil of a fellow in these modern times. No stagecoaches to hold up. No princesses to rescue. Just Petey Todd to escort, while the easy, expert fellow walks the pretty girl home.

How true, lamentably true. I'm sorry, Father. I do not love my neighbor as myself.

A person might get angry when the girl he loves says she'll never marry.

Smash the table, why don't you? Kick things about. It's ever so nice to see you embrace the true spirit of the Fraternitus.

I explained we lost the porch to the flood. 'Father hasn't gotten around to rebuilding it, although he's quite a good carpenter. He says if Jesus was a carpenter, it's good enough for a clergyman. But I don't remember that Jesus let his house fall down.

There is a lump of desolation beneath the bony dip at my throat. It is no bigger than a coin, this spot, a peculiarly small place to hold such a feeling. I try to shove it to some deeper region, but there it sticks, a fragile skin-thickness from the outside world.

My feet are wet," said Mr. Dreary. "You lack the proper gear," I said. We teetered along a trickle of land that wound between water and mud. "Here in the swamp, even the swans wear rubber boots.

It's just as well I switched hands: Witches are thought to be left-handed. Perhaps it's true. Rose is no witch and she uses her right hand. We are mirror twins, she and I. What's left for me is right for her; and if I wanted to feel sorry for myself, I might say nothing's right for me.