174 Quotes by Frances Hardinge

Large people tend to have large heads. Men are no cleverer than we are, Miss Sunderly. Just taller.

It did seem hard to be doing something heroic while everyone was too busy to notice.

But scissors are really intended for one job alone – snipping things in two. Dividing by force. Everything on one side or the other, and nothing in between.

Would you have her birched in the public square? Baited by dogs perhaps? Madam, we have destroyed her good name, and she will find the world a much colder and darker place as a result. Even now her father is probably changing her name to Buzzletrice.

They understood something together at that moment, Makepeace and Bear. Sometimes you had to be patient through pain, or people gave you more pain. Sometimes you had to weather everything and take your bruises. If you were lucky, and if everyone thought you were tamed and trained... there might come a time when you could strike.

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

She dreamed of a world where books did not rot or give way to green blot, where words and ideas were not things you were despised for treasuring.

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

I did not see your mother at the funeral,’ she said, following the thought. ‘She stopped coming to them after her own,’ Paul answered simply.