Franny Billingsley - Chime (2011)

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I should hate to be a regular girl with a sugar-plum voice. I should hate to have swan-like lashes, and a thick, sooty neck. I sound as though I'm joking, I know, but I should truly hate to be like Leanne, so charming and ordinary and stuffed with clichéd feelings. I'm glad I'm the ice maiden. Who wants to be crying over every stray dog? Not I. Scratch my surface and what do you see? More surface.

Franny Billingsley
You don't mind when he stares at you. Cecil jerked his head toward Eldric. "He doesn't stare, I said. He looks.

Franny Billingsley
This is what I want. I want people to take care of me. I want them to force comfort upon me. I want the soft-pillow feeling that I associate with memories of being ill when I was younger, soft pillows and fresh linens and satin-edged blankets and hot chocolate. It's not so much the comfort itself as knowing there's someone who wants to take care of you.

Franny Billingsley
Secrets press inside a person. They press the way water presses at a dam. The secrets and the water, they both want to get out.

Franny Billingsley
Our English monarchs are so unimaginative, said Eldric. They execute people in such tediously conventional ways.

Franny Billingsley
Let's hope she's like the others, who look only at the surface. Let's hope she'd never think that a girl with black-velvet eyes and cut-glass cheekbones could be a witch.

Franny Billingsley
I don't mind the disapproving ones so much. It's the tolerant ones I can't stand, the ones who smile at Rose, who speak to her ever so slowly and gently. They don't realize how very intelligent Rose really is. They're just terrifically pleased with themselves. Look at me! they all but shout. See how broad-minded I am! How wonderfully progressive, how fantastically twentieth century!

Franny Billingsley
When Rose takes to screaming, she starts loud, continues loud, and ends loud. Rose has a very good ear and always screams on the same note. I'd tested her before I burnt the library, and our piano along with it. Rose screams on the note B flat. We don't need a piano anymore now that we have a human tuning fork.

Franny Billingsley
If you say a word, it leaps out and becomes the truth. I love you. I believe it. I believe I am loveable. How can something as fragile as a word build a whole world?

Franny Billingsley
He scooped up my arm, swung me round. Let go, Cecil, I said. I've a strange dislike of being forced. But Briony, he said, I'm so full of good spirits. I could walk to London, I think! Why didn't he?

Franny Billingsley
We laughed a lot and I grew warmer still, lovely and warm. I do realize that some of that warmth was due to the wine, but there was much more to it than that. 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.

Franny Billingsley
There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable. Take Othello. He was neither right nor reasonable, and Desdemona ended up dead. I wouldn't mind Leanne ending up dead. I wouldn't mind exploding her into fireworks of peacock and pearl.

Franny Billingsley
A girl can have the face of an angel but have a horrid sort of heart.

Franny Billingsley
You could at least complain, I say. I adore complaining. It calms the nerves.

Franny Billingsley
I don't like my shoes,' said Rose. 'I'm wearing my shoes and you don't see me complain.' 'You only hear a person complain,' said Rose. 'Not see.' How has Rose lived for seventeen years and no one has killed her, not once?

Franny Billingsley
Thoughts are strange creatures. They lead you from one thing to another. Sometimes you don't know how you got from one to the next.

Franny Billingsley
My own mask stayed just where it ought. I've had lots of practice.

Franny Billingsley
Boxing's not that straightforward, said Eldric. You can practice and practice, but the real experience will always be different. Lots of things are like that, actually.

Franny Billingsley
Despite her cough, Rose was in unusually good spirits. That was irritating. If I'm to trade my life for Rose's, I'd appreciate her exhibiting a touch of melancholy. Also acceptable would be despair.

Franny Billingsley
I might be a wicked girl who'd think nothing of eating a baby for breakfast, but I'd never allow myself to get expelled. It's far too public.

Franny Billingsley
When we were small, Rose and I used to play a game called connect the dots. I loved it. I loved drawing a line from dot number 1 to dot number 2 and so on. Most of all, I loved the moment when the chaotic sprinkle of dots resolved itself into a picture. That's what stories do. They connect the random dots of life into a picture. But it's all an illusion. Just try to connect the dots of life. You'll end up with a lunatic scribble.

Franny Billingsley
Actually, it would be assumed that the young lady had no such impulses at all, but I'll tell you something: Chocolate melts on my tongue too.

Franny Billingsley
I don't mean to be ungrateful but if someone's out there answering prayers, mine's not at the top of the list

Franny Billingsley
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, its good enough for a clergyman. But I don't remember that Jesus let his house fall down.

Franny Billingsley
I hope you don't mind my joining you, said Leanne. I minded. After all, she'd tried to kill me. A girl in a novel would say it was hard to believe, but it wasn't.

Franny Billingsley
Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.

Franny Billingsley
Did I kill him? I said. No, miss, said Robert. Pity.

Franny Billingsley
It's strange how a person can have a distinct distaste for herself, but still she clutches on to life.

Franny Billingsley
A poem doesn't come out and tell you what it has to say. It circles back on itself, eating its own tail and making you guess what it means.

Franny Billingsley
But witchy magic doesn't listen to please and pretty please, and anyway, I didn't really care. I only pretended to care because not caring makes me a monster.

Franny Billingsley