Deeplight Quotes

“You will find out who you are when your choices test you. In the end, we are what we do and what we allow to be done.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“I’m glad we’re free, even if we do stupid things with the freedom sometimes. Maybe sometimes there isn’t a right thing to do. Maybe there’s just lots of wrong answers, and you have to pick one you can bear – something that doesn’t break who you are.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“Human fear has a terrible power. It changes everything, distorts everything, maddens everything. Fear is the dark womb where monsters are born and thrive.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“It is easy to love power, because power tells you it is majesty and beauty and greatness.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“You could keep people alive forever through stories.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“Stories were ruthless creatures and sometimes fattened themselves on bloody happenings.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“What aspects of yourself would you fight to protect, as if you were fighting for your life?”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“We are what we do, and what we allow to be done.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“There was another kind of beauty, however, and everyone on the Myriad knew it. A twisted beauty that turned your stomach even while it turned your head. Frecht was the old word, a harsh word ragged with superstitious awe. It was an ugliness and otherness that could only be holy, a breach of the rules that echoed those that no rules coul bind.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“Despair was a numbing poison. The moment you decided the worst was inevitable, it was.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“You must not love them. It is easy to love power because power tells you it is majesty and beauty and greatness. But the gods were monsters. Do not even love their memory. The gods are dead.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“Maybe you couldn’t ever owe somebody your life, not really. You couldn’t let anyone else decide what you did with it. You had to live it yourself, as truly as you could.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“What does that story tell us about the Cardinal? It tells us that he could soften or harden his flesh at will. How did he do that? For a long time I had no idea. Then I listened to the stories again, and noticed how many of the translucent gods screamed like the Cardinal, or sang like the Gathergeist. They used sound - vibrations - to change their own bodies."
It crossed Hark's mind that people could be softened the same way. You said the right thing, and struck the right chord, and then they were easier to manipulate. Bringing up Vyne's great success seemed to have sounded the right note.
"That is the trick of it," remarked Vyne. "Listening to someone's story, and hearing what lies behind it. People always tell you more than they realize.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“It would probably be better to have a ruler who didn’t sell people or bend his own laws. For the moment, however, this man was perhaps just the best of the wrong answers available.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“You must not love them,” said Quest gently. “It is easy to love power, because power tells you it is majesty and beauty and greatness. But the gods were monsters. Do not even love their memory.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“There is always hope. There are always chances.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“At your age, you are still asking yourself: Who should I be? I must ask myself: Did I manage to be the person I wanted to be, in the end? And how many chances do I have left to be that person?”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“We are all squeezed into new shapes by the people around us. If we are paying attention, though, we always have some say in how we are altered.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“Now the sky was a jaded, stormy gray, and the air had a damp, cold glisten that promised rain.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“Everyone on the Myriad was always one divine whim away from annihilation.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“In Selphin's gaze, Hark saw desperation, terror, rage, and a will as relentless as winter. He had just enough time to realize how wrong he was before she turned and jumped.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“The merchant was leaning forward now, spyglass jammed to his eye. Since all of this was a story to tell his friends later, a tragedy was as good as triumph. Better, perhaps. Stories were ruthless creatures, and sometimes fattened themselves on bloody happenings.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“We are what we do and what we allow to be done.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“Seal, she signed. Hunting a big glass fish.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“As usual, his expression was distracted but intense, as if listening to the world whispering something that riled him.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“I would like to thank: Ella, a young reader who contacted me to ask whether I would ever consider including a deaf character in one of my books, triggering a small avalanche in my brain that resulted in the invention of the sea-kissed, after which she generously became my expert consultant;”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight