A Face Like Glass Quotes

“Do you know why a vandal is worse than a thief?" asked the man on the right, in a soft growl. "A thief steals a treasure from its owner. A vandal steals it from the world.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Yes, I know,’ she said in answer to the unasked, for there was no time for explanations. ‘Yes. My face is spoilt.’

Grandible’s jowl wobbled and creased. Then, for the first time that Neverfell could remember, he changed to a Face she had never seen before, a frown more ferocious and alarming than either of the others.

‘Who the shambles told you that?’ he barked. ‘Spoilt? I’ll spoil them.’ He took hold of her chin and examined her. ‘A bit sadder, maybe. A bit wiser. But nothing rotten. You’re just growing yourself a rind at last. Still a good cheese.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Nobody’s mind ever remains a blank page, however carefully they are locked away from the world.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“I swam across the torrent of my madness, and pulled myself upon the shore of a new and better sanity.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“It was all very well being told that she could do nothing to make things better. Neverfell did not have the kind of mind that could take that quietly. She did not have the kind of mind that could be quiet at all.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“She lay there with her eyes closed, as if sleep were a shy creature that might venture out if she played dead. But every time it seemed to be drawing closer, some loud thought would crash and blunder through the undergrowth, putting it to flight.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Change is necessary and, deny it as we may, in the end change is always inevitable.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Zouelle had forgotten how tiring it was listening to a Neverfell at full pace, like being bludgeoned with exclamation marks.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“At one o’clock, the ever-logical Right-Eye Grand Steward woke up to discover that during his sleep his left-eyed counterpart had executed three of his advisors for treason, ordered the creation of a new carp pool and banned limericks. Worse still, no progress had been made in tracking down the Kleptomancer, and of the two people believed to be his accomplices, both had been released from prison and one had been appointed food taster. Right-Eye was not amused. He had known for centuries that he could trust nobody but himself. Now he was seriously starting to wonder about himself.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“It draws you in. You twist your mind into new shapes. You start to understand Caverna . . . and you fall in love with her. Imagine the most beautiful woman in the world, but with tunnels as her long, tangled, snake-like hair. Her skin is dappled in trap-lantern gold and velvety black, like a tropical frog. Her eyes are cavern lagoons, bottomless and full of hunger. When she smiles, she has diamonds and sapphires for teeth, thousands of them, needle-thin."

"But that sounds like a monster!"

"She is. Caverna is terrifying. This is love, not liking. You fear her, but she is all you can think about.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Have you ever seen an anthill?" he said at last. "A machine of tiny marchers. Too much motion, you cannot make out the aims in it. But take something away from that anthill – a stone, a leaf, a dead caterpillar – and the ants scurry. You see which ones you have sabotaged, which ones are disturbed and scuttling to prop something in its place. That is what I do. That is kleptomancy. Divination by theft. Find something that is important, something on which you suspect many plans rely, and remove it. Then sit and watch. That’s why stealing you will help, even if you know nothing. Right now, the people who want to use you and the people who want you dead will be in a race to find you before the other does. People in a hurry often show their hand by mistake.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“It is dangerous to lock oneself away and lose track of what is happening outside.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“It is terribly bad form to admit to being terrified for one’s life, but nobody in their right mind would go to a Court banquet without making preparations. One must have the right costume, the right Faces, and at least eighty-two ways of avoiding assassination.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“I can't think straight. But why am I trying to do that anyway? Everybody else thinks straight. That's why nobody expects me to think zigzag-hop.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“In an instant he saw the delusion of his five hundred years. He was not looking into a box; he was looking out of one. All these centuries his mind, his body, his world had been a box of horrors. He took one last breath, then pushed open the lid of his prison and escaped.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you’re sane? That you’ve always been sane? That perhaps you’re the sanest person in the city?"

"I hope not," whispered Neverfell. "Because, if I’m sane, then there’s something wrong with Caverna, something horrible and sick, and nobody else has noticed. If I’m sane, then we shouldn’t be sitting around talking – we should all be clawing our way out as fast as we can."

"Oh, I don’t think she’d like that," the Kleptomancer remarked, with a hint of affection in his voice. "She needs us. Without us, there is no her, after all. She is the city, not the tunnels, and so she does everything she can to keep us down here. Sometimes I even wonder whether it is only possible to create True Delicacies here because she gives them their power, as a bribe to stop us leaving. When the Grand Steward declared that nobody was allowed to enter or leave the city, I believe he became her chosen beloved. I will tell you something else, though I cannot prove it. The city grows, and not just through the effort of pick and shovel. She has been stretching, spreading and contorting to make room for us all, and I think that is why geography no longer makes sense.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Pull on a thread, and you pull on the whole web. And then out come the spiders . . .”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“There was too much to feel strongly about, she was stretched too thin, so she could not quite feel anything about anything.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Well, they set spiders and snakes on me for a bit and blew me up and there was this really scary cake, but it’s mostly all right now, I think. Except I don’t ever want any more cake. Look!”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Don’t trust anybody over a hundred and fifty years old, particularly if they look thirty. Anybody who gets that old in Caverna loses something, and they don’t get it back. They can’t feel properly any more. They’re hollow inside, and all they got left is a hunger – a hunger to feel. They’re like . . . great big trap-lanterns, all blind gaping need, and thousands of teeth, with decades to come up with tricks and schemes.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“All her life, Neverfell had suffered the dull, embarrassed ache of the knowledge that she was always the maddest person in the room. Funnily enough, the realization that this was probably no longer the case did not make her feel better at all.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“But . . . I want to remember this conversation! I want to understand! I don’t want to be a toy! I don’t want to be a thing! I want to know how everything works!”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“In Caverna lies were an art and everybody was an artist, even young children.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“And Neverfell started to understand the beauty of flaws, those places where up and down secretly gave up their argument and shook hands, where compass points spun like a dervish and where space itself was twisted like a wrung-out flannel. These places were the dimples for Caverna’s glittering smile, her foibles, her signature. To understand them was to steal a smile, a twisted rose from her hand, a bone from between her thousand teeth.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“You see, I had been exploring the tunnels of my own mind, and my greatest idea had come to me."

"What was it?" Neverfell was fascinated.

"I do not know," the Kleptomancer answered, perfectly phlegmatically. "But I am sure I will let myself know when the time is right. You see, anybody who chases a plan, however secretively and indirectly, gives themselves away. After a while you can predict them, work out what they want. So I decided the only way to avoid this was not to know what the plan was, or even the parts of the plan, until I needed them. Nobody could predict me, because I could not predict myself. Nobody could work out what I wanted, because I did not know what I wanted.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“I don't quite have a plan, but I think now I sort of have a plan for how to make a plan for coming up with a plan. And I can't think about it too hard right now or it won't work.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“I left you clean. Purged of all your ghosts. I am the one who has been haunted all my life. Haunted by you.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“But Wine doesn’t make anything go away! When you bury a big memory it’s always still there, like an itch right down inside your bones where you can’t scratch it, or somebody walking a step behind you that you can’t look at. And . . . and if we didn’t remember things we wish we hadn’t done, wouldn’t we just run off and do them again?”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“She was not undamaged, however, and she knew it. No food or drink had passed her lips, but she had drunk deep of the Truth, and now it could not be flushed out of her system with bitter cordials, or washed from her skin, or picked out of her hair.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“She did it on purpose," hissed Treble. "I know she did. But why? Why expose Childersin, and then cause so much chaos that we cannot pursue him properly? I know him. Even now he will be looking to turn all this to his advantage. Men – be alert. He will probably try to have me assassinated any moment n—"

Enquirer Treble had a good set of instincts. Two faint, metallic scraping sounds caught her ear, one to her left and one to her right, and before her mind had even registered them as the sound of drawing swords she had already flung herself to the ground. Looking up, she saw that her two bodyguards had managed to impale each other, whilst stabbing at the place she had been a moment before. They crumpled to the ground, one even managing a surprised Face before he expired.

"Not again," snarled Treble as she clambered to her feet. "Core of the Earth! Is there anybody working for me who is actually working for me?”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass