Clent sat up with impressive if graceless promptness, snatched his wig from a bedknob, and slammed it on his head back to front. Only then did he go about the business of actually waking.
Frances HardingeI think that when Lady Tamarind looks at you, she feels as the cathedral might if it suddenly remembered that once it had been a grim little church facing down musket fire and a cruel sea wind.
Frances HardingeOrdinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone ran and hid in their houses, but a very short while later, if all seemed quiet, they came out again and started selling each other potatoes.
Frances HardingeTag: human-nature
In Mosca’s experience, a ‘long story’ was always a short story someone did not want to tell.
Frances HardingeIt did seem hard to be doing something heroic while everyone was too busy to notice.
Frances HardingeI am content to be hated, and bloody, and outnumbered. For in this sickened world, it is better to believe in something too fiercely than to believe in nothing."
Words, words, wonderful words. But lies too.
"No, it isn’t!" shouted Mosca the Housefly, Quillam Mye’s daughter. "Not if what you’re believin’ isn’t blinkin’ well True! You shouldn’t just go believin’ things for no reason, pertickly if you got a sword in your hand! Sacred just means something you’re not meant to think about properly, an’ you should never stop thinking! Show me something I can kick, and hit with rocks, and set fire to, and leave out in the rain, and think about, and if it’s still standing after all that then maybe, just maybe, I’ll start to believe in it, but not till then. An’ if all we’re left with is muck and wickedness and no gods, then we’d better face it and get used to it because it’s better than a lie.
I mean...if I told people what to believe, they’d stop thinking. And then they’d be easier to lie to. And...what if I was wrong?’
‘So...if you may not decide what is true, and the men of letters may not, who may?’
‘Nobody. Everybody.’ Mosca looked up at the windows where the jubilant people of Mandelion swung their bells. ‘Clamouring Hour – that’s the only way. Everybody able to stand up and shout what they think, all at once. An’ not just the men of letters, an’ the lords in their full-bottomed wigs, but the streetsellers an’ the porters an’ the bakers. An’ not just the clever men, but the muddle-headed, and the madmen, and the criminals, an’ the children in their infant gowns, an’ the really, really stupid. All of ’em. Even the wicked, Mr Clent. Even the Birdcatchers.
Every time I do what you say I tumble a bit farther down this well of darkness, an' this here is a drop too deep an' too dark for me. I have to stop falling while I can still see a bit of the sky.
Frances HardingeHathin stared out across the water and deliberately let her eyes unfocus slightly. It did no good lodging your gaze on the waves as they slid and fractured. The trick was to see nothing and everything, until you started to notice any tear or break in the rhythms of the water.
Frances HardingeSo this was a nest of radicals. She thought a hotbed of sedition would involve more gunpowder and secret handshakes, and less shuffling of feet and passing the sugar.
Frances HardingeTag: humour
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