Frances Hardinge

“They were preparing to become memories.”

— Frances Hardinge

“Even when she slept, her anxieties did not.”

— Frances Hardinge

“In the interests of Truth, I would lie.”

— Frances Hardinge

“True stories seldom have endings.”

— Frances Hardinge

“Follow that coffeehouse.”

— Frances Hardinge

“Besides, woods made sense. Woods were home.”

— Frances Hardinge

I want my chirfugging goose back!

— Frances Hardinge

“the murderess of time.”

— Frances Hardinge

In Mosca’s experience, a ‘long story’ was always a short story someone did not want to tell.

— Frances Hardinge

“There were creases at the corners of her mouth, the marks of too many words bitten back.”

— Frances Hardinge

Oh, painted smirk of a hopeless dawn, the girl is still wearing her breeches...

— Frances Hardinge

“She felt like an amputee, reaching out reflexively with an arm she no longer had.”

— Frances Hardinge

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

— Frances Hardinge

“Mye, do you ever think of the future?’ ‘Do I get to have a future?”

— Frances Hardinge

“In Caverna lies were an art and everybody was an artist, even young children.”

— Frances Hardinge

If wits were pins, the man would be a veritable hedgehog.

— 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…

— Frances Hardinge

“Mother was like this sometimes. Conversations became riddles with traps in them, and your answers had consequences.”

— Frances Hardinge

“Little god, you see the world through such black eyes." "Got no choice. My father give ’em to me.”

— Frances Hardinge

“Well, if you are to help me with my work, you had better get used to stories without endings. True stories seldom…

— Frances Hardinge

“Everybody betrayed her, so why expect otherwise? But it turned out that distrust could fool you and endanger you, just as trust…

— Frances Hardinge

“She had big, vague eyes and a big, vague smile, and was always very busy in the way that a moth crashing…

— Frances Hardinge

That," he whispered, "is unthinkable." In Mosca’s experience, such statements generally meant that a thing was perfectly thinkable, but that the speaker…

— Frances Hardinge

“Nobody’s mind ever remains a blank page, however carefully they are locked away from the world.”

— 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…

— Frances Hardinge

Ordinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone…

— Frances Hardinge

“In an instant he saw the delusion of his five hundred years. He was not looking into a box; he was looking…

— Frances Hardinge

“I understand Neverfell, you see. For Neverfell, it is as if other people are part of her. When she believes they are…

— Frances Hardinge

“Would you have her birched in the public square? Baited by dogs perhaps? Madam, we have destroyed her good name, and she…

— Frances Hardinge

“She lay there with her eyes closed, as if sleep were a shy creature that might venture out if she played dead.…

— Frances Hardinge

“I think that when Lady Tamarind looks at you, she feels as the cathedral might if it suddenly remembered that once it…

— Frances Hardinge

“Sometimes she felt she would like to engulf him like a trap-lantern, and never share him with anyone or anything else again,…

— Frances Hardinge

“I generally find,' Clent murmured after a pause, 'that it is best to treat borrowed time the same way as borrowed money.…

— Frances Hardinge

“I know how it is," Madame Appeline said, narrowing her slanting eyes slightly over her ice-cream smile. "There is a feeling deep…

— Frances Hardinge

“Have you ever seen an anthill?" he said at last. "A machine of tiny marchers. Too much motion, you cannot make out…

— Frances Hardinge

“Lies can be wrung out of a witness as easily as truth. Yes, after a few hours with the Enquiry’s . .…

— Frances Hardinge

Mosca said nothing. The word ‘damsel’ rankled with her. She suddenly thought of the clawed girl from the night before, jumping the…

— Frances Hardinge

“Since the Heart of Consequence was ripped out of the churches, even the stars shine crooked in the skies. Everyone goes to…

— Frances Hardinge

“And you may comfort yourself with the thought that you have been the caltrop under her satin shoe every step of the…

— Frances Hardinge

“Eponymous Clent- Wanted for thirty-nine cases of fraud, counterfeiting, selling, and circulating lewd and unlicensed literature, claiming to be the impecunious son…

— Frances Hardinge