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The boy shall have a proper beating,' said Cecil. 'But I beat him already,' I said, 'and don't tell me I didn't do it properly. I'm touchy about these things.

Franny Billingsley

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Franny Billingsley
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: July 3
Author
Writer
Already
Boys
Cecil
Shall
Touchy
Tell
Beating
Didn
Properly
Things
Proper
Beat
Beats

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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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I don't mean to be ungrateful but if someone's out there answering prayers, mine's not at the top of the list
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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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It’s one thing if a person learns you’re a witch. It’s quite another if he learns you’re a murderer. I almost forget I’m a witch now that I know I’m a murderer—murderess, actually. Murderess sounds so much worse.
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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My own mask stayed just where it ought. I’ve had lots of practice.
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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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Father sighed. “Please spare me these arguments of yours.” “Whose arguments should I use?
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Did I kill him?” I said. “No, miss,” said Robert. “Pity.
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If you don't argue, you can't give in.
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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.
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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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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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