Quotes from Franny Billingsley

I'm not like that fellow who thought it a far, far better thing to trade his life for that of another. I'm nothing like him: I'd never volunteer to lay my head in the lap of Madame la Guillotine. No, that fellow was a hero and I'm not a hero at all.

I have a theory about how she might have managed to pull off such a feat. It comes in the form of an equation: Love + Fear = Herculean Strength. It's how mothers come to fling runaway motorcars from their children.

This is the difference between Eldric and me. Had it been my job to transform the garden, I would have removed the clothesline. Clotheslines always make me think of undergarments, and although I've never been to Japan, I don't imagine a memory-whiff of undergarments is at all À la Japonaise.

For four years I have been wearing blinders. I thought all this time I walked a path of cobblestones, and it turns out to have been an avenue of stars! For four years, my head has been caught in a box. Its sides were painted with pleasant enough scenes, but that I should have thought this was the world!

You could write your way into happiness. It might not be the happiness you'd experience if Eldric pushed Leanne from a cliff, but there's a firefly glimmer in writing something that would please Rose.

I deserved a holiday, and I deserved to dispense with the laces and trusses expected of a clergyman's daughter. I wore my oldest frock, which looked remarkably like a potato sack, and I wore very little beneath. I should never have imagined how lovely that feels. It's most freeing, and it gives you the delicious sense you're on your way to moral degeneracy. I shall soon be painting my lips and drinking gin.

My, my," said Eldric. "You are full of surprises.

I adore complaining— it calms the nerves

There are two distinct aspects to Communion wine: one aspect is the wine itself, the other is the idea of communion. Wine is certainly warming, but communion is a great deal more so.

My fist flew forward. "Nicely done!" said Eldric, although it had glanced off of his palm like a pebble. "Why aren't you begging for mercy?" "I make a point never to do so," said Eldric. It puts one at a disadvantage.

Remember: You're the girl with nothing below the surface. Scratch it and what do you find? More surface.

How many bones did he set?" I cared about it much less than they did. It's my Florence Nightingale calm, I suppose. There was a pause. "Twenty-seven," said Father. There was a question mark in that pause. "How many bones are in the hand?" Another pause. "Twenty-seven," said Eldric.

I knew then the taste of true fear. It tastes of dark places deep in your stomach and holds you by the neck.

Meaning. If you're going to die, you want to find meaning in life. You want to connect the dots.

Skipping meals is terrifically convenient: It gives one lots of time to brood and hate oneself.

I knew that tune, but I couldn't remember it. It hovered on the edge of my mind. I tried to grab it, but you can't just grab your memories. You have to pretend not to pay attention to them, which makes them mad. You have to trick them into sneaking up on you from behind.

I've been thinking," said the Eldric image. "Ooh, thinking!" I said. "Shall I tell your father?" "Very funny," said Eldric, but he was laughing.

That girl was gone; wolfgirl had returned. Wolfgirl, who was leaf dance and moon claw and tooth gleam. When Jupiter sizzled the air with lightning bolts, she caught them on the fly. "Nice throw, Jupiter!" "Nice catch, wolfgirl!" Her mouth was a cavern of stars.

Excellent fistibus," said Eldric, but he wasn't done with my hand. He inspected my left palm, the pucker of scars. "There's no fortune to be read in that palm," I said, but of course he wanted to know about it; of course he'd been dying to ask since we first met. "Do you want the version of the story in which I'm a hero, or do you want the true version?" "Both," said Eldric. "Greedy!" I said.

you can't get at a memory as you might get at a splinter. You can't poke about in your mind with a sterilized needle

When you're jealous, your spit turns to acid. When you're jealous, you eat yourself from the inside out

I grew up in a household that was filled with Scottish and Irish ballads. So I think that the complexity and the melancholy and the languor of them has kind of gotten into my bones and that's the way I write. Now what does it contribute to my books? I don't know; I guess I would say that those are the kinds of books I like to read, books with vivid images and lots of mist and velvet cloaks and stuff. It's not as though I'm setting out to do that; it's just who I am.

Storybook events come in threes. So, it seems, does Hell.

Death had no lips, but it was smiling.