Frances Hardinge Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

Well, you will have to do. If you had died along with your mother, I would have taught the cat to read.

Frances Hardinge
Perhaps illnesses could be left behind, just like small, badly concealed china corpses.

Frances Hardinge
I'm never telling the truth again! It gets you hanged and locked out and starved and froze and hated...

Frances Hardinge
It was hopeless. She was flawless. She was a sunbeam. Mosca gave up and got on with hating her.

Frances Hardinge
We always find it difficult to forgive our heroes for being human.

Frances Hardinge
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
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
I find it hard to believe that a lady like...' Pertellis hesitated, and coughed. 'There is something elevated in the female spirit that will always hold a woman back from the coldest and most vicious forms of villainy.' 'No, there isn't,' Miss Kitely said kindly but firmly, as she set a dish in his hand. 'Drink your chocolate, Mr Pertellis.

Frances Hardinge
Mosca and Saracen shared, if not a friendship, at least the solidarity of the generally despised. Mosca assumed that Saracen had his reasons for his persecution of terriers and his possessive love of the malthouse roof. In turn, when Mosca had interrupted Saracen's self-important nightly patrol and scooped him up, Saracen had assumed that she too had her reasons.

Frances Hardinge
Making a wish is like saying, 'I can't deal with anything, I give up, somebody bigger come along and solve it all instead.

Frances Hardinge
So this was a nest of radicals. She thought a hotbed of sedition would involve more gunpowder and secret handshakes, and less shuffling of feet and passing the sugar.

Frances Hardinge
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
It was all very well being told that she could do nothing to make things better. Neverfell did not have the kind of mind that could take that quietly. She did not have the kind of mind that could be quiet at all.

Frances Hardinge
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
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
My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic.

Frances Hardinge
Desperation is a millstone. It wears away at the very soul, grinding away pity, kindness, humanity and courage. But sometimes it whets the mind to a sharpened point and creates moments of true brilliance. And standing there, nose tickled by the dusty hide of the stuffed deer head, such a moment visited Mosca Mye.

Frances Hardinge
Words were dangerous when loosed. They were more powerful than cannon and more unpredictable than storms. They could turn men's heads inside out and warp their destinies. They could pick up kingdoms and shake them until they rattled.

Frances Hardinge