Franny Billingsley Quotes

“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?”

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

“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.”

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

“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.”

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

“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.”

— Franny Billingsley

“Eldric turned away from the mirror, holding out his hand. In the cup of his hand lay his fidget of paper clips. But the fidget had blossomed into a crown. An allover-filigree crown, with a twisty spire marking the front.
I stared at it for some moments. "It's for you," said Eldric. "If you want it."
"I'm seventeen," I said. "I haven't played at princess for years."
"Does that matter ?" Eldric set it on my head. It was almost weightless, a true crown for the steam age.
In a proper story, antagonistic sparks would fly between Eldric and me, sparks that would sweeten the inevitable kiss on page 324. But life doesn't work that way. I didn't hate Eldric, which, for me, is about as good as things get.”

— Franny Billingsley

“There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable. Take Othello. He was neither right nor reasonable, and Desdemona ended up dead. I wouldn't mind Leanne ending up dead. I wouldn't mind exploding her into fireworks of peacock and pearl.”

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

“Death had no lips, but it was smiling”

— Franny Billingsley

“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.”

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

“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.”

— Franny Billingsley

“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.”

— Franny Billingsley

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.

— Franny Billingsley

“We laughed a lot and I grew warmer still, lovely and warm. I do realize that some of that warmth was due to the wine, but there was much more to it than that. There are two distinct aspects to Communion wine: one aspect is the wine itself, the other is the idea of communion. Wine is certainly warming, but communion is a great deal more so.”

— Franny Billingsley

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.

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

“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.”

— Franny Billingsley

“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.”

— Franny Billingsley

It's one thing if a person learns you're a witch. It's quite another if he learns you're a murderer. I almost forget I'm a witch now that I know I'm a murderer-murderess, actually. Murderess sounds so much worse.

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

“Word magic. If you say a word, it leaps out and becomes the truth. I love you. I believe it. How can something as fragile as a word build itself a whole world?”

— Franny Billingsley

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.

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

I am entirely well," said Eldric, "which has Dr. Rannigan exploring first one theory, then another, trying to understand. But not being a man of science, I don't care about understanding. I simply want to go outside and break a few windows.

— Franny Billingsley

“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.”

— Franny Billingsley

“Eldric wore his lazy lion's smile. He didn't mind what he was called. He was a sticks-and-stones sort of person.”

— Franny Billingsley

“I can.
He rent his dark tresses,
Resulting in messes,
Thus prompting his L.I. to flee till,
she reached the end of the world and jumped off.
Perhaps I have untapped potential.”

— Franny Billingsley

“If there were such a thing as a vampire-puppy-dog, it would be Cecil. Big pleading eyes, asking for an ear-scratch and a nice warm bowl of blood.”

— Franny Billingsley

“A toast at your wedding, perhaps?" said Eldric.
"I shall never get married," I said. "But I do like champagne.”

— Franny Billingsley

“Darling! Had they darlinged each other when they were here? I imagined them, magnificent on horseback, tossing darlings to and fro.”

— Franny Billingsley

“I think about the Old Ones, that they have a past but no history. I think about the inevitability of death, and whether it's not that very inevitability that inspires us to take photographs and make scrapbooks and tell stories. That that's how we humans find our way to immortality. This is not a new thought; I've had such thoughts before. But I have a new thought now.
That that's how we find our way toward meaning.
Meaning. If you're going to die, you want to find meaning in life.
You want to connect the dots.”

— Franny Billingsley

Briony scared?" said Eldric. "I've never seen anyone less scared in my life. She has nerves of iron.

— Franny Billingsley

A person might get angry when the girl he loves says she'll never marry.

— Franny Billingsley

Smash the table, why don't you? Kick things about. It's ever so nice to see you embrace the true spirit of the Fraternitus.

— Franny Billingsley

Our parents teach us the very first things we learn. They teach us about hearts.

— Franny Billingsley

“I explained we lost the porch to the flood. 'Father hasn't gotten around to rebuilding it, although he's quite a good carpenter. He says if Jesus was a carpenter, it's good enough for a clergyman. But I don't remember that Jesus let his house fall down.”

— Franny Billingsley

“The problem I have telling my secret', said Eldric, 'is that it's a secret.”

— Franny Billingsley

“Is this what a nun feels when she runs wild? Perhaps running wild needn't mean dressing in satin and taking to cigarettes. It might mean running into the wild, into the real, into the ooze and muck and the clean, muddy smell of life.”

— Franny Billingsley

“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.”

— Franny Billingsley

“You could write your way into happiness. It might not be the happiness you'd experience if Eldric pushed Leanne from a cliff, but there's a firefly glimmer in writing something that would please Rose.”

— Franny Billingsley

“He scooped up my arm, swung me round. "Let go, Cecil," I said. "I've a strange dislike of being forced." "But Briony," he said, "I'm so full of good spirits. I could walk to London, I think!" Why didn't he?”

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley

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

— Franny Billingsley