Quote

It is true that I can trip over anything and nothing – a speck of dust, a patch of sunlight, an idea. I move through life like a person with one eye, through a landscape that looks flat, but is really tricked out with hidden depths and shallows. It didn’t use to be so, but no matter. I navigate the world well enough in my own way.

Franny Billingsley

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Franny Billingsley
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: July 3
Author
Writer
Wells
Moving
Sunlight
Specks
Life
Well
Use
Hidden
Patch
Like
Nothing
True
Landscape
Navigate
World
Matter
Didn
Dust
Patches
Looks
Anything
Depth
Depths
Enough
Persons
Move
Trip
Shallows
Ideas
Eye
Flat
Tricked
Really
Person
Idea
Flats
Speck
Way

More quotes by Franny Billingsley

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Did I kill him?” I said. “No, miss,” said Robert. “Pity.
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It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.
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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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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
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You could at least complain,” I say. “I adore complaining. It calms the nerves.
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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, its good enough for a clergyman. But I don't remember that Jesus let his house fall down.
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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.
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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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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.
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Father sighed. “Please spare me these arguments of yours.” “Whose arguments should I use?
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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 don't like my shoes,' said Rose. 'I'm wearing my shoes and you don't see me complain.' 'You only hear a person complain,' said Rose. 'Not see.' How has Rose lived for seventeen years and no one has killed her, not once?
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I hated myself, but I also loved myself in a hateful way.
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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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Even a witch wants sympathy.
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If you don't argue, you can't give in.
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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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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.
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Blast Cecil!” said Eldric. “You have my permission,” I said.
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Our English monarchs are so unimaginative,” said Eldric. “They execute people in such tediously conventional ways.
Franny Billingsley