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You could at least complain,” I say. “I adore complaining. It calms the nerves.

Franny Billingsley

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Franny Billingsley
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: July 3
Author
Writer
Complain
Nerves
Complaining
Calm
Least
Calms
Complaints
Adore

More quotes by 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.
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Father sighed. “Please spare me these arguments of yours.” “Whose arguments should I use?
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Blast Cecil!” said Eldric. “You have my permission,” I said.
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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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It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.
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
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My own mask stayed just where it ought. I’ve had lots of practice.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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 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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If you don't argue, you can't give in.
Franny Billingsley
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
Franny Billingsley