The Lie Tree Quotes

“Faith had always told herself that she was not like other ladies. But neither, it seemed, were other ladies.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“There was a hunger in her, and girls were not supposed to be hungry. They were supposed to nibble sparingly when at table, and their minds were supposed to be satisfied with a slim diet too.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“This is a battlefield, Faith! Women find themselves on battlefields, just as men do. We are given no weapons, and cannot be seen to fight. But fight we must, or perish.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“Quiet people often have a weather sense that loud people lack. They feel the wind-changes of conversations, and shiver in the chill of unspoken resentments.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“Who had they been, all these mothers and sisters and wives? What were they now? Moons, blank and faceless, gleaming with borrowed light, each spinning loyally around a bigger sphere.
‘Invisible,’ said Faith under her breath. Women and girls were so often unseen, forgotten, afterthoughts. Faith herself had used it to good effect, hiding in plain sight and living a double life. But she had been blinded by exactly the same invisibility-of-the-mind, and was only just realizing it.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“It has made me what I am. When every door is closed, one learns to climb through windows. Human nature, I suppose.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“Large people tend to have large heads. Men are no cleverer than we are, Miss Sunderly. Just taller.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“I am not good. Something in Faith’s head broke free, beating black wings into the sky. Nobody good could feel what I feel. I am wicked and deceitful and full of rage. I cannot be saved. She did not feel hot or helpless any more. She felt the way snakes looked when they moved.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“Magic” was not an answer; it was an excuse to avoid looking for one.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“People were animals, and animals were nothing but teeth. You bit first, and you bit often. That was the only way to survive.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“We thought ourselves kings of the ages. Now we find that all our civilisation has been nothing but a brief, brightly lit nursery, where we have played with paper crowns and wooden sceptres.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“She had needed kindness before, and had received none. Now it was too late, and she did not know what to do with it.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“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.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“For a tiny instant Faith wondered whether it would benefit the doctor's investigation if he experienced a cliff fall first-hand.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“This was the hardest part. It was easier to be the witch, the harpy. Being human was dangerous.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“She wanted there to be more blood and screeching. She wanted each death to detonate before her like a little black firework. She wanted it to matter. There was bellowing all around her, but the killing itself was soft and quiet and matter of fact. Life to death, life to death, with no more drama than turning over a counterpane.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“Her self-respect had suffered a head-on collision with love, a clash that generally only ends one way. Love does not fight fair. In that moment her pride, the gut knowledge that she was right, even her sense of who she was, meant nothing, faced as she was with the prospect of being unloved.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“here in the drawing room, each lady quietly relaxed and became more real, expanding into the space left by the men. Without visibly changing, they unfolded, like flowers, or knives.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“She felt utterly crushed and betrayed. Science had betrayed her. She had always believed deep down that science would not judge her, even if people did. Her father's books had opened to her touch easily enough. His journals had not flinched from her all too female gaze. But it seemed that science had weighed her, labelled her and found her wanting. Science had decreed that she could not be clever… and that if by some miracle she was clever, it meant that there was something terribly wrong with her.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“Choose a lie that others wish to believe” was written beneath it. “They will cling to it, even if it is proven false before their face. If anyone tries to show them the Truth, they will turn on them and fight them tooth and nail.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“She had always known that she was rated less than Howard, the treasured son. Now, however, she knew that she was ranked somewhere below “miscellaneous cuttings.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“There were kind lies. You still look beautiful. I love you. I forgive you.
There were frightened lies. Someone else must have taken it. Of course I am Anglican. I never saw that baby before.
There were predatory lies. Buy this tonic if you want your child to recover. I will look after you. Your secret is safe with me.
Half-lies, and the tense little silences where a truth should have been. Lies like knives, lies like poultices. The tiger's stripe, and the fawn's dusky dapple. And everywhere, everywhere, the lies that people told themselves. Dreams like cut flowers, with no nourishing root. Will-o'-the-wisp lights to make them feel less alone in the dark. Hollow resolutions and empty excuses.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“A rain shower was rehearsing. A few experimental droplets filled the silence.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“C'era una vera e propria fame in lei, e alle ragazze non si cnfaceva essere fameliche. Le ragazze dovevano sbocconcellare con parsimonia a tavola. e le loro menti dovevano accontentarsi di una dieta morigerata. Ma tutto questo a lei non bastava. Tutta la conoscenza - ogni genere di conoscenza - attirava Faith, e c'era un piacere delizioso, pernicioso, nel carpirla senza essere scoperta.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“I was always awake!” interrupted Faith. “I was always angry!”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“We thought ourselves kings of the ages. Now we find that our civilization has been nothing but a brief, brightly lit nursery, where we have played with paper crowns and wooden scepters. Beyond the door are the dark wastes where Leviathans wrestled for millennia. We are a blink of an eye, a joke amidst a tragedy.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“So what do you want?" asked Myrtle.
"I want to help evolution."
Evolution did not fill Faith with the same horror her father had felt. Why should she weep to hear that nothing was set in stone? Everything could change. Everything could get better. Everything was getting better, inch by inch, so slowly that she could not see it, but knowing it gave her strength.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“There may be questions still unanswered, but that means that we need science, not that science is useless [...] There are fish in the sea as yet uncaught, but that does not mean that fishing nets have failed and should be thrown aside.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“The past was all around her. She could smell it. It did not feel dead. It felt alive, and as curious about her as she was about it.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree

“He had been enjoying his explanation, and now she had spoiled things by knowing too much.”
― Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree