Frances Hardinge

If you want someone to tell you what to think," the phantom answered briskly, without looking up, "you will never be short…

— Frances Hardinge

“And Neverfell started to understand the beauty of flaws, those places where up and down secretly gave up their argument and shook…

— Frances Hardinge

“The only sane option was to retreat back out into the corridor. Fortunately sanity had never really slowed Neverfell down.”

— 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

“She could feel her mind pulling loose like knitting, the neat stitches of her artificial days unravelling to become one mangled thread.”

— Frances Hardinge

You’re a peach full of poison, you know that?" Mosca snapped back, but could not quite keep a hint of admiration from…

— Frances Hardinge

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

— Frances Hardinge

“So she was ‘my lady’ now, not ‘miss’. That was what she had always wanted, wasn’t it? Why did the words chill…

— Frances Hardinge

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

— Frances Hardinge

“However, the crowds all the while maintained their mouse-tense hush, their air of urgency. Fear. There was a reek of it everywhere,…

— Frances Hardinge

“She did not hate Clent for the way he had spoken. For most of her life she had been at the mercy…

— Frances Hardinge

“Mosca felt something enormous swell within the knotted stomach that she hid behind her fists. It seemed it must surge out of…

— Frances Hardinge

“You know, that’s a really beautiful bow," Neverfell interrupted suddenly. "Did you make it?" "Found it, mended it, modified it," was the…

— Frances Hardinge

“Hathin stared out across the water and deliberately let her eyes unfocus slightly. It did no good lodging your gaze on the…

— Frances Hardinge

“Clent sat up with impressive if graceless promptness, snatched his wig from a bedknob, and slammed it on his head back to…

— Frances Hardinge

“She could find no purchase on the older woman’s marble-smooth countenance. There were no cracks to give her a view into her…

— Frances Hardinge

“Nobody was to be trusted. The plan that had ensnared her had been the brainchild of her protector, Maxim Childersin.”

— Frances Hardinge

“I’m a monster too. And they probably can’t help it either.”

— Frances Hardinge

“That last extraordinary Face had sent a throb through her very soul, like a breeze shivering the string of a harp, and…

— Frances Hardinge

“Through the bars he had laid eyes on a face like glass, somebody who could not lie without it being obvious. And…

— 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

I find it hard to believe that a lady like...’ Pertellis hesitated, and coughed. ‘There is something elevated in the female spirit…

— Frances Hardinge

“Mosca had preferred it when she could hear the edge in her companion’s voice. Now she felt like someone who knows that…

— Frances Hardinge

“Mosca had been so busy working the oars of her little plan that she had failed to see the iceberg upon which…

— Frances Hardinge

“If someone throws aside their pride and begs with all their heart, and if they do so in vain, then they are…

— Frances Hardinge