Frances Hardinge Quotes

“I don’t know. How can you know? I…I’m a monster. When I’m hungry, I might do anything."
"Oh no, of course I couldn’t possibly understand you." Violet’s shadowed face seemed to be wearing a grim and serious smile. "I know, you woke up one day and found out that you couldn’t be the person you remembered being, the little girl everybody expected you to be. You just weren’t her any more, and there was nothing you could do about it. So your family decided you were a monster and turned on you." Violet sighed, staring out into the darkness.

"Believe me, I do understand that. And let me tell you - from one monster to another - that just because somebody tells you you’re a monster, it doesn’t mean you are.

"just now you told me what you did because you want me to stop you from eating Pen. If you were a real monster, you wouldn’t have done that, would you?"

Trista’s eyes stung, and she wiped strands of cobweb away with her sleeve.

"Idiot," added Violet, for good measure.”
― Frances Hardinge, Cuckoo Song

“Life isn't that simple. People aren't that simple. You can't cut them into slices like a cake, then throw away the bits you don't like.”
― Frances Hardinge, Cuckoo Song

“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.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lost Conspiracy

“Life isn't that simple. People aren't that simple. You can't cut them into slices like a cake, then throw away the bits you don't like.”
― frances hardinge , Cuckoo Song

“I beg pardon, madam, but are you saying that the Lock-forgive me, that THEY terrify the town with a giant cabbage-eating pantomime horse?”
― Eponymous Clent

“Why? How had this otherwise sensible woman who had only met Beamabeth as a screaming purple blob fallen under her spell? Or had Beamabeth slipped immaculate into the world, petal-cheeked and smiling amidst gleaming golden curls?”
― Frances Hardinge

“Before the war, everyone had their rung on the ladder, and they didn't look much below or above it. But now? Low and high died side by side in Flanders Fields, and looked much the same facedown in the mud.”
― Frances Hardinge, Cuckoo Song