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My own mask stayed just where it ought. I’ve had lots of practice.

Franny Billingsley

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Franny Billingsley
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: July 3
Author
Writer
Practice
Stayed
Mask
Lots
Ought

More quotes by 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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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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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.
Franny Billingsley
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I hated myself, but I also loved myself in a hateful way.
Franny Billingsley
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Father sighed. “Please spare me these arguments of yours.” “Whose arguments should I use?
Franny Billingsley
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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.
Franny Billingsley
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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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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.
Franny Billingsley
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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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If you don't argue, you can't give in.
Franny Billingsley
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Did I kill him?” I said. “No, miss,” said Robert. “Pity.
Franny Billingsley
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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.
Franny Billingsley
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Blast Cecil!” said Eldric. “You have my permission,” I said.
Franny Billingsley
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Our English monarchs are so unimaginative,” said Eldric. “They execute people in such tediously conventional ways.
Franny Billingsley
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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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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.
Franny Billingsley
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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?
Franny Billingsley
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You could at least complain,” I say. “I adore complaining. It calms the nerves.
Franny Billingsley
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It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.
Franny Billingsley
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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.
Franny Billingsley