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Frances Hardinge QUOTES

Frances Hardinge QUOTES

1 " Zeal was like gas, most dangerous when you could not see it. The wrong spark could light it at any time. "

― Frances Hardinge

2 " For a tiny instant Faith wondered whether it would benefit the doctor's investigation if he experienced a cliff fall first-hand. "

― Frances Hardinge , The Lie Tree

3 " 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

4 " Faith had always told herself that she was not like other ladies. But neither, it seemed, were other ladies. "

― Frances Hardinge , The Lie Tree

5 " She felt utterly crushed and betrayed. Science had betrayed her. She had always believed deep down that science would not judge her, even if people did. Her father's books had opened to her touch easily enough. His journals had not flinched from her all too female gaze. But it seemed that science had weighed her, labelled her and found her wanting. Science had decreed that she could not be clever… and that if by some miracle she was clever, it meant that there was something terribly wrong with her. "

― Frances Hardinge , The Lie Tree

6 " And perhaps some other later girl, leafing through her father's library, would come across a footnote in an academic journal and read the name 'Faith Sunderly.' Faith? she would think. That is a female name. A woman did this. If that is so...then so can I. And the little fire of hope, self-belief and determination would pass to another heart. "

― Frances Hardinge

7 " 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

8 " It could be kindness. Faith felt hollow at the thought. She had needed kindness before, and has received none. Now it was too late, and she did not know what to do with it. "

― Frances Hardinge , The Lie Tree

9 " She had needed kindness before, and had received none. Now it was too late, and she did not know what to do with it. "

― Frances Hardinge , The Lie Tree

10 " There were kind lies. You still look beautiful. I love you. I forgive you.
There were frightened lies. Someone else must have taken it. Of course I am Anglican. I never saw that baby before.
There were predatory lies. Buy this tonic if you want your child to recover. I will look after you. Your secret is safe with me.
Half-lies, and the tense little silences where a truth should have been. Lies like knives, lies like poultices. The tiger's stripe, and the fawn's dusky dapple. And everywhere, everywhere, the lies that people told themselves. Dreams like cut flowers, with no nourishing root. Will-o'-the-wisp lights to make them feel less alone in the dark. Hollow resolutions and empty excuses. "

― Frances Hardinge , The Lie Tree

11 " Silence itself could be used as deftly and cruelly as a kire "

― Frances Hardinge , The Lie Tree

12 " Somehow the sting of guilt was always more acute when there was a risk that she might get caught. "

― Frances Hardinge , The Lie Tree

13 " My mother is not evil, Faith reminded herself. She is just a perfectly sensible snake, protecting her eggs and making her way in the world as best she can. "

― Frances Hardinge

14 " Change is necessary and, deny it as we may, in the end change is always inevitable. "

― Frances Hardinge , A Face Like Glass

15 " At first only Tamarind had noticed the awkward, disquieting way his expressions changed, as if a puppeteer were pulling wires to move his face muscles, and doing it rather badly. Nowadays she saw the fear in everybody’s eyes. Her brother was going out of tune like an old piano, and nobody would come to retune his strings. Dukes and kings may go mad at their leisure, for nobody has enough power to stop them. "

― Frances Hardinge , Fly by Night

16 " And you may comfort yourself with the thought that you have been the caltrop under her satin shoe every step of the way. You misdirected the Romantic Facilitator she had hired, you turned up in her own house and reported her plans to her father and when she was on the brink of snatching the ransom you careered in from stage left dressed as a pantomime horse and threw everything into disorder. And then, just when she was probably working her way towards claiming a second ransom, you rescued her. "

― Frances Hardinge , Fly Trap

17 " Revenge is a dish best served unexpectedly and from a distance - like a thrown trifle. "

― Frances Hardinge

18 " Tea is the magic key to the vault where my brain is kept. "

― Frances Hardinge

19 " True stories seldom have endings.
I don't want a happy ending, I want more story. "

― Frances Hardinge , Fly by Night

20 " The heart of being a radical isn’t knowing all the right books, it isn’t about kings over the sea or the parliament over in the capital. It’s… looking at the world around you and seeing the things that make you sick to your stomach with anger. The things there’s no point making a fuss about because that’s just the way the world is, and always was and always will be. And then it means getting good and angry about it anyway, and kickin’ up a hurricane. Because nothing is writ across the sky to say the world must be this way. A tree can grow two hundred years, and look like it’ll last a thousand more - but when lightning strikes at last, it burns. "

― Frances Hardinge , Fly Trap