Frances Hardinge > Quotes

“Tea is the magic key to the vault where my brain is kept.”
― Frances Hardinge

“True stories seldom have endings.
I don't want a happy ending, I want more story.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“Revenge is a dish best served unexpectedly and from a distance - like a thrown trifle.”
― Frances Hardinge

“Faith had always told herself that she was not like other ladies. But neither, it seemed, were other ladies.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“Where is your sense of patriotism?"

I keep it hid away safe, along with my sense of trust, Mr. Clent. I don't use 'em much in case they get scratched.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“We always find it difficult to forgive our heroes for being human.”
― Frances Hardinge, Well Witched

“Truth is dangerous. It topples palaces and kills kings. It stirs gentle men to rage and bids them take up arms. It wakes old grievances and opens forgotten wounds. It is the mother of the sleepless night and the hag-ridden day. And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would silence Truth’s voice are more destructive by far.

It is most perilous to be a speaker of Truth. Sometimes one must choose to be silent, or be silenced. But if a truth cannot be spoken, it must at least be known. Even if you dare not speak truth to others, never lie to yourself.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“There was a hunger in her, and girls were not supposed to be hungry. They were supposed to nibble sparingly when at table, and their minds were supposed to be satisfied with a slim diet too.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“Do you know why a vandal is worse than a thief?" asked the man on the right, in a soft growl. "A thief steals a treasure from its owner. A vandal steals it from the world.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“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.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lost Conspiracy

“In Mosca’s experience, a ‘long story’ was always a short story someone did not want to tell.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“You, sir, are a romantic, and I'm afraid the condition is incurable.

-Eponymous Clent”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“This is a battlefield, Faith! Women find themselves on battlefields, just as men do. We are given no weapons, and cannot be seen to fight. But fight we must, or perish.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“If wits were pins, the man would be a veritable hedgehog.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“But in the name of all that is holy, Mosca, of all the people you could have taken up with, why Eponymous Clent?" murmured Kohlrabi.

Because I'd been hording words for years, buying them from peddlers and carving them secretly on bits of bark so I wouldn't forget them, and then he turned up using words like "epiphany" and "amaranth." Because I heard him talking in the marketplace, laying out sentences like a merchant rolling out rich silks. Because he made words and ideas dance like flames and something that was damp and dying came alive in my mind, the way it hadn't since they burned my father's books. Because he walked into Chough with stories from exciting places tangled around him like maypole streamers..."

Mosca shrugged.
"He's got a way with words.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“Yes, I know,’ she said in answer to the unasked, for there was no time for explanations. ‘Yes. My face is spoilt.’

Grandible’s jowl wobbled and creased. Then, for the first time that Neverfell could remember, he changed to a Face she had never seen before, a frown more ferocious and alarming than either of the others.

‘Who the shambles told you that?’ he barked. ‘Spoilt? I’ll spoil them.’ He took hold of her chin and examined her. ‘A bit sadder, maybe. A bit wiser. But nothing rotten. You’re just growing yourself a rind at last. Still a good cheese.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“If you want someone to tell you what to think..."

"You will never be short of people willing to do so.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“Brand a man as a thief and no one will ever hire him for honest labor - he will be a hardened robber within weeks. The brand does not reveal a person's nature, it shapes it.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“Quiet people often have a weather sense that loud people lack. They feel the wind-changes of conversations, and shiver in the chill of unspoken resentments.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“Who had they been, all these mothers and sisters and wives? What were they now? Moons, blank and faceless, gleaming with borrowed light, each spinning loyally around a bigger sphere.
‘Invisible,’ said Faith under her breath. Women and girls were so often unseen, forgotten, afterthoughts. Faith herself had used it to good effect, hiding in plain sight and living a double life. But she had been blinded by exactly the same invisibility-of-the-mind, and was only just realizing it.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“It has made me what I am. When every door is closed, one learns to climb through windows. Human nature, I suppose.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“Sometimes fear made you angry. Perhaps after years anger cooled, like a sword taken from a forge. Perhaps in the end you were left with something very cold and very sharp.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“Nobody’s mind ever remains a blank page, however carefully they are locked away from the world.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“The world is like a broken wrist that healed the wrong way, and will never be the same again.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“You will find out who you are when your choices test you. In the end, we are what we do and what we allow to be done.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“I want to be a bad example,’ she said.
‘I see.’ Myrtle stirred herself, ready to walk to the prow. ‘Well, my dear, I think you have made an excellent start.”
― Frances Hardinge

“I generally find,' Clent murmured after a pause, 'that it is best to treat borrowed time the same way as borrowed money. Spend it with panache, and try to be somewhere else when it runs out.'

'And when we get found, Mr. Clent, when the creditors and bailiffs come after us and it's payment time...'

'...then we borrow more, madam, at a higher interest. We embark on a wilder gamble, make a bigger promise, tell a braver story, devise a more intricate lie, sell the hides of imaginary dragons to desperate men, climb to even higher and more precarious ground...and later, of course, our fall and catastrophe will be all the worse, but later will be our watchword, Mosca. We have nothing else - but we can at least make later later.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly Trap

“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.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Skinful of Shadows

“Ordinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone ran and hid in their houses, but a very short while later, if all seemed quiet, they came out again and started selling each other potatoes.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night