Franny Billingsley Quotes

It's the picnic principle. Things taste better outdoors. And if it's a forbidden thing, so much the better.

Witches don’t look like anything. Witches are. Witches do.

Even a witch wants sympathy.

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.

Eavesdropping is such a regular-person activity.

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?

I like rain and mist. I've never understood why people exclaim over bright skies and bushels of glaring sunshine.

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.

Now that’s true poetic irony. I rush into battle to defend the fair name of Rose Larkin, and what does she do but fetch Robert to stop me.

Perhaps you should put your head down.” I knew this was the thing to do, although I’ve never fainted and I don’t intend to.

Meaning. If you're going to die, you want to find meaning in life. You want to connect the dots.

Yes, I'm shallow, I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps I should admit that there's no end to the depths of my shallowness.

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.

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.

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

I’m not really the sacrificing type.

That’s where proper stories begin, don’t they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?

You could at least complain,” I say. “I adore complaining. It calms the nerves.

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.

My own mask stayed just where it ought. I’ve had lots of practice.

Father sighed. “Please spare me these arguments of yours.” “Whose arguments should I use?

People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don’t feel very much.

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

How can something as fragile as a word build the whole world?

I hated myself, but I also loved myself in a hateful way.

I've confessed to everything and I's liked to be hanged. Now, if you please

You mind your tongue!” “Oh, I do,” I said. “I sharpen it every evening on your name.

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

Poor Petey. I’d like to say I could almost feel a tender spot for poor Petey, but the truth is I’d rather feel at the tender spot on his head and give it a poke.

Did I kill him?” I said. “No, miss,” said Robert. “Pity.

He’s harmless, poor thing. That’s what everyone said. It was true, but who cares? Lots of people are harmless, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them.

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.

It wasn't quite a question. It was more of an invitation to tell him whatever I chose. Eldric game me a choice, and it was this that made me want to tell him everything.

I still can't understand how Cecil and my old tutor, Fitz, got along so well, when we often called Fitz 'the Genius' and avoided calling Cecil anything at all, so as not to be rude.

The boy shall have a proper beating,' said Cecil. 'But I beat him already,' I said, 'and don't tell me I didn't do it properly. I'm touchy about these things.

Should I ever again sink into illness, I'm sure I'll remember Eldric. I'll remember he cared for me. I'll remember that someone had at least taken the time to touch my face.

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

I was asking about lust, wasnʼt I? I was fairly certain of it. But isnʼt love supposed to come before lust? It does in the dictionary.

If you don't argue, you can't give in.

Imagine a world without shadows. You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.

I don't know what it is, but I ache for it each day. It's as though I have eyes, but there are colors I cannot see. As though I have ears, but there's a range of notes I cannot hear.

It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.

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.

Death had no lips, but it was smiling

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.

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.

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

Blast Cecil!” said Eldric. “You have my permission,” I said.

There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable.

You can outrun your memories, but sometime, you will have to stop. And when you do, there will always be Stepmother, waiting to be remembered.