Top 100 Diana Wynne Jones Quotes
#1. Doras II was a somewhat absentminded king, It is said, when Death came to summon him, Doras granted Death the usual formal audience and then dismissed him from his presence. Death was too embarrassed to return until many years later- Ka'a Orto'o, Gnomic Utterances
Diana Wynne Jones
#3. Everybody at a university was to her a professor, unless they were students of course, and therefore even worse.
Diana Wynne Jones
#4. By now it was clear that Howl was in a mood to produce green slime any second. Sophie hurriedly put her sewing away. "I'll make some hot buttered toast," she said. "Is that all you can do in the face of tragedy??" Howl asked. "Make toast!
Diana Wynne Jones
#5. Zip! Back to the mansion. Zip! to Market Square. Zip! and there was the castle yet again. She was getting the hang of it. Zip! Here was Upper Folding - but how did you stop? Zip! "Oh, confound it!" Sophie cried, almost in Marsh Folding again.
Diana Wynne Jones
#7. There goes Mig with her happy endings again," Chris said. But I don't care. I like happy endings. And I asked Chris why something should be truer just because it's unhappy. He couldn't answer.
Diana Wynne Jones
#8. And indeed if you think you're a genius at something what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you're no good, you're not going to get anywhere.
Diana Wynne Jones
#9. Mr. Lynn gave her one of his considering looks. "People are strange," he said. "Usually they're much stranger than you think. Start from there and you'll never be unpleasantly surprised. Do you fancy doughnuts?
Diana Wynne Jones
#11. You're wearing that hat? After all the magic I used to make your dress pretty?"
~Howl from the movie 'Howl's Moving Castle
Diana Wynne Jones
#12. Controller Borasus sighed with relief. Libraries were not places of danger. It had to be a hoax.
Diana Wynne Jones
#13. I think one of things is that all fantasy it seems to me works the way your brain basically works. This is perhaps a startling concept, but I think it's true.
Diana Wynne Jones
#14. I don't think I will get married," Polly said as she stood up. "I'm going to train to be a hero instead.
Diana Wynne Jones
#15. Somewhere in the lane after that they came level with a small door next to a fried chicken shop. There was a small red-lit sign over this door.
Diana Wynne Jones
#16. It's a lucky child that knows that they're a genius, unaimed and all that.
Diana Wynne Jones
#17. Then there you are, then. The day Howl forgets to do that will be the day I believe he's really in love, and not before.
Michael to Sophie about wether or not Howl is really in love with Lettie. pg, 170
Diana Wynne Jones
#19. If you're thinking of calling on that Mrs. Pentstemmon, you can save yourself the trouble. The old biddy's dead."
"Dead?" said Sophie. She had a silly impulse to add, But she was alive an hour ago! And she stopped herself, because death is like that: people are alive until they die.
Diana Wynne Jones
#20. I'm delirious," said Howl. "Spots are crawling before my eyes."
"Those are spiders," said Sophie. "Why can't you cure yourself with a spell?"
"Because there is no cure for a cold," Howl said dolefully.
Diana Wynne Jones
#21. I make that four horses and ten men just to get rid of one old woman. What did you do to the King?
Diana Wynne Jones
#22. It was odd. As a girl, Sophie would have shriveled with embarrassment at the way she was behaving. As an old woman, she did not mind what she did or said. She found that a great relief.
Diana Wynne Jones
#23. Mainly as sort of blueprints for dealing with most of the adults in their lives, to some extent with their fellows. It is this notion of aiming high and there's always hope, aim low and you might as well stop now.
Diana Wynne Jones
#24. SAGE. A wise and Holy man who died a long time ago. No one modern qualifies.
Diana Wynne Jones
#25. Charles realized that if he were going to apologize to Chrestomanci, he had better do it at once. He turned around to say it. But the folds had already rippled flat and nothing was the same anymore ...
Diana Wynne Jones
#27. You are nosy," said Howl. "You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all." "But
Diana Wynne Jones
#28. It seems to me that humour is everybody's way of keeping sane and standing off from the situations so that they can see it intellectually, as well as emotionally, and I don't know whether you've noticed, but if somebody tells a joke, it's nearly always a mini fantasy.
Diana Wynne Jones
#29. He picked up the skull and knocked an onion ring out of its eye socket.
"I see Sophie has been busy again. Couldn't you have restrained her, my friend?" The skull yattered its teeth at him. Howl put it down rather hastily.
Diana Wynne Jones
#30. Don't interrupt,' one of the boys said. 'He'll lose his life.'
Seeing it was a matter of life and death, Sophie and Michael backed toward the door. But Howl, quite unperturbed at killing his nephew, strode over to the wall and pulled the boxes up by the roots.
Diana Wynne Jones
#32. Polly finished her huge narrative during the summer term. The day after she had finished it, she went round with the oddest mixture of feelings, pride at having got it done, sick of the sight of it and glad it was over, and completely lost without it.
Diana Wynne Jones
#33. Sophie got out the modish black-and-white, which was the only hat even remotely likely to interest this lady. The lady looked at it with contempt. "This one doesn't do anything for anybody. You're wasting my time, Miss Hatter." "Only because you came in and asked for hats," Sophie said.
Diana Wynne Jones
#34. When you grow up to be an author and write books, you'll think you're making the books up, but they'll all really be true, somewhere.
Diana Wynne Jones
#36. And you're too nice," he added, above the lap-lap of the water and the patter of sand on the water-lily leaves. "I was relying on you being too jealous to let that demon near the place.
Diana Wynne Jones
#37. Doors are very powerful things. Things are different on either side of them.
Diana Wynne Jones
#38. A very short burst of thought was enough to convince Abdullah that his situation, despite the chains, would be very much worse if he became a toad.
Diana Wynne Jones
#39. I only want to catch you," Michael explained. "I won't hurt you."
"No! No!" the star crackled desperately. "That's wrong! I'm supposed to die!"
"But I could save you if you'd let me catch you," Michael told it gently.
"No!" cried the star. "I'd rather die!
Diana Wynne Jones
#40. I am not,' he said, 'having that lummock-de-troll glunching about this place! Trod on all my tomatoes, he did, last year.
Diana Wynne Jones
#41. To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.
Diana Wynne Jones
#42. For answer, Calcifer stretched out a blue arm-shaped flame divided into green fingerlike flames at the end. It was not very long, nor did it look strong. "See? I can almost reach the hearth," he said proudly.
Diana Wynne Jones
#43. "Eight Days of Luke" was refused by another confused publisher on the grounds that children shouldn't strike matches. When my agent pointed out that David in the book was twelve years old, the publisher said that he was striking matches to summon the devil, then, and this couldn't be allowed.
Diana Wynne Jones
#44. Then watch out. I warn you!"
"That is very considerate of you," said Chrestomanci. "I like to be warned.
Diana Wynne Jones
#45. Every man in Ingary is scared stiff of her. You ought to know how that feels, Sophie dear.
Diana Wynne Jones
#46. Goats," said Maxwell Hyde, "are a special case. Mad as hatters, all of them.
Diana Wynne Jones
#47. Alas, poor Yorick!" he said. "She heard mermaids, so it follows that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. I have caught an everlasting cold, but luckily I am terribly dishonest. I cling to that.
Diana Wynne Jones
#48. And said grace in Welsh. It was all rolling, thundering language.
Diana Wynne Jones
#49. Pray use both cats as sponges if it pleases you, infatuated infantryman.
Diana Wynne Jones
#50. So you eat them. And don't try chucking them away. I'll know. I empty the bins.
Diana Wynne Jones
#51. So you were going to rescue the Prince! Why did you pretend to run away? To deceive the Witch?"
"Not likely! I'm a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell myself I'm not doing it!
Diana Wynne Jones
#52. Yes, you are nosy. You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all.
Diana Wynne Jones
#53. The demon at length fell to singing a gentle, flickering little song. It was not in any language Sophie knew - or she thought not, until she distinctly heard the word "saucepan" in it several times ...
Diana Wynne Jones
#54. I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so.
Diana Wynne Jones
#55. The silence became uneasy. It was broken by the elderly princess saying, The most distressing thing about being up here above the clouds is that there is no weather to make conversation out of.
Diana Wynne Jones
#56. Evidently she was one of those people who like to cling to a theory once they have made it.
Diana Wynne Jones
#57. Sophie did not care to think how Howl might react if Fanny woke him by stabbing him with her parasol.
Diana Wynne Jones
#58. Can't you just keep your big mouth shut?" Brian said furiously to Nan. He pointed to Chrestomanci. "How do we know he's safe? For all we know, he could be the devil that you summoned up!"
"Oh, you flatter me, Brian," Chrestomanci said.
Diana Wynne Jones
#59. Go to bed, you fool," Calcifer said sleepily. "You're drunk."
"Who, me?" said Howl. "I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober." He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him.
Diana Wynne Jones
#60. All these things that crib and cab in your brain, in your imagination, are in fact things that might well in later life drive you insane.
Diana Wynne Jones
#61. If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine.
Diana Wynne Jones
#62. Learn to drive?"
"Never," said Quentin. "My mission in life is to be a passenger.
Diana Wynne Jones
#63. Howl said to Sophie, I've been wondering all along if you would turn out to be that lovely girl I met on May Day. Why were you scared then?
Diana Wynne Jones
#65. Lettie, as the second daughter, was never likely to come to much,
Diana Wynne Jones
#66. When have you looked?" said Sophie.
"Oh, how your rears flap and your long nose twitches", Howl croaked.
Diana Wynne Jones
#67. She had a silly impulse to add, But she was alive an hour ago! And she stopped herself, because death is like that: people are alive until they die. "Yes.
Diana Wynne Jones
#68. THE OLD LAB was not used for anything much except detention. But there was still a faint smell of old science clinging to it, from generations of experiments which had gone wrong.
Diana Wynne Jones
#69. One does not want glory accepted as a matter of course. One wants to shock and astonish people with it.
Diana Wynne Jones
#70. He lied about that. He didn't want to annoy you. He's a slitherer-outer, if you know what I mean, Your Majesty.
Diana Wynne Jones
#71. Howl's very fickle," said Calcifer. "He's only interested until the girl falls in love with him. Then he can't be bothered with her.
Diana Wynne Jones
#72. Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs!
Diana Wynne Jones
#77. I can't abide people who go soft over animals and then cheat every human they come across!
Diana Wynne Jones
#78. If I give you a hint and tell you it's a hint, it will be information.
Diana Wynne Jones
#84. As often happened, Charmain began to despair of getting her mother to understand. She's not stupid, she just never lets her mind out, she thought.
Diana Wynne Jones
#85. Wizard Howl," said Wizard Suliman. "I must apologize for trying to bite you so often. In the normal way, I wouldn't dream of setting teeth in a fellow countryman.
Diana Wynne Jones
#88. City of Wizards is normally quite a GOOD thing, since only Good WIZARDS seem able to live together ... There have been cities of EVIL Wizards in the past. You will occasionally come across the sites of these, reduced to a glassy slag during the ultimate disagreement.
Diana Wynne Jones
#89. Happiness isn't a thing. You can't go out and get it like a cup of tea. It's the way you feel about things.
Diana Wynne Jones
#90. The most she knew about gardens was the Bakers' own backyard, which contained one large mulberry tree and a rosebush, plus the window boxes where her mother grew runner beans. She knew there was earth under the plants and that the earth contained worms. She shuddered.
Diana Wynne Jones
#91. How does she keep it up? How can Miss Hodge be a teacher and not use witchcraft at all? I use it all the time. How else can I have eyes in the back of my head?'
'One of the great mysteries of our time,' Chrestomanci agreed.
Diana Wynne Jones
#92. Sorry, I've had enough of running away, Sophie. Now I've got something I want to protect. It's you.
Diana Wynne Jones
#93. Writing for adults, you have to keep reminding them of what is going on. The poor things have given up using their brains when they read. Children you only need to tell things to once.
Diana Wynne Jones
#94. At least, I suppose I can't blame Calcifer, since he's an evil demon. But you you Michael-!"
"I don't think I'm evil," Calcifer protested.
Diana Wynne Jones
#95. It seems that Fate has decreed that I live through my entire daydream in reality!
Diana Wynne Jones
#96. I feel ill," he announced. "I'm going to bed, where I may die." He tottered piteously to the stairs. "Bury me beside Mrs. Pentstemmon," he croaked as he went up then to bed.
Diana Wynne Jones
#97. What's the good of being civilized, that's what I'd like to know? It just means other people can break the rules and you can't.
Diana Wynne Jones
#99. And suddenly, as if her head had cleared, she was quite sure that wonderful things did indeed exist. Even if they're only in my own mind, she thought, they're there and worth fighting for. I mustn't give in.
Diana Wynne Jones
#100. If you must know, I-I had never in my life kissed a young lady, and you are far too beautiful to me to want to get it wrong!
Diana Wynne Jones
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