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

Franny Billingsley

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Franny Billingsley
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: July 3
Author
Writer
Shadow
Imagine
Cannot
Without
Hard
Flat
World
Flats
Shadows
Touch

More quotes by Franny Billingsley

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My own mask stayed just where it ought. I’ve had lots of practice.
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Our English monarchs are so unimaginative,” said Eldric. “They execute people in such tediously conventional ways.
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You could at least complain,” I say. “I adore complaining. It calms the nerves.
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You don’t mind when he stares at you.” Cecil jerked his head toward Eldric. He doesn’t stare,” I said. “He looks.
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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.
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Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.
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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.
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It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.
Franny Billingsley
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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.
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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.
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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.
Franny Billingsley
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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.
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Even a witch wants sympathy.
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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
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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.
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I hated myself, but I also loved myself in a hateful way.
Franny Billingsley
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People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don’t feel very much.
Franny Billingsley
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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.
Franny Billingsley
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I don't mean to be ungrateful but if someone's out there answering prayers, mine's not at the top of the list
Franny Billingsley
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Father’s silence is not merely the absence of sound. It’s a creature with a life of its own. It chokes you. It pinches you small as a grain of rice. It twists in your gut like a worm. Silence clawed at my throat. It left a taste of burnt matches.
Franny Billingsley