Top 100 Diana Wynne Jones Quotes
#1. Diana Wynne Jones' excellent book 'The Tough Guide to Fantasyland' is a compendium of the sort of lazy writing that has given fantasy fiction - especially the sub-section that features elves and dwarves and other Tolkienesque elements - a bad name.
Jane Lindskold
#2. She was witchy, yes, and in charge of a cauldron roiling with ideas and stories, but she always gave the impression that the stories, the ones she wrote and wrote so very well and so wisely, had simply happened, and that all she had done was to hold the pen. (On Diana Wynne Jones)
Neil Gaiman
#3. 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
#5. Everybody at a university was to her a professor, unless they were students of course, and therefore even worse.
Diana Wynne Jones
#7. 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
#8. 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
#10. You people keep spoiling my plans. First Wizard Suliman would not come near the Waste, so that I had to threaten Princess Valeria in order to make the King order him out here. Then, when he came, he grew trees.
Diana Wynne Jones
#11. You shone like a star. The funniest, wisest writer & the finest friend
Neil Gaiman
#12. Please, your story, or I shall offend the dignitaries of my kingdom by yawning at holy things.
Diana Wynne Jones
#13. Christopher discovered that you dealt with obnoxious masters and most older boys the way you dealt with governesses: you quite politely told them the truth in the way they wanted to hear it, so that they thought they had won and left you in peace.
Diana Wynne Jones
#14. It was only when Shona, in sheer fury, turned the carnivorous sheep among them that they moved. They ran, some of them with charming little white sheep attached to their legs or backsides and the rest shouting about monsters.
Diana Wynne Jones
#16. 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
#18. 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
#19. Things we are accustomed to regard as myth or fairy story are very much present in people's lives. Nice people behave like wicked stepmothers. Every day.
Diana Wynne Jones
#20. 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
#21. On Wednesday, for variety, he accosted Andrew as Andrew went out to check the state of the garden walls and presented a further cardboard box containing ten kilos of tomatoes and a squash like a deformed head of a baby.
Diana Wynne Jones
#23. But Sophie and Howl were holding one another's hand and smiling and smiling, quite unable to stop. "Don't bother me know," said Howl. "I only did it for the money." "Liar!"said Sophie. "I said," Michael said, "that Calcifer's come back!" That did get Howl's attention and Sophie's too.
Diana Wynne Jones
#24. I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we.
Diana Wynne Jones
#25. 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
#26. Controller Borasus sighed with relief. Libraries were not places of danger. It had to be a hoax.
Diana Wynne Jones
#27. All she heard next of the strange conversation behind the sofa was Mrs. Pendragon saying something about sending Twinkle (or was his name Howl?) to bed without supper and Twinkle daring her to 'jutht TRY it.
Diana Wynne Jones
#28. 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
#29. I do feel very strongly that this is one of the things which people need encouragement to sort out, because I have this very strong feeling that everybody is probably a genius at something, it's just a question of finding this.
Diana Wynne Jones
#30. May I remind you, Howard, that mens means "the mind" and mensa means "a table"? But I expect in your case the two things are the same. No, no, don't scratch your head, boy. You'll get splinters.
Diana Wynne Jones
#31. 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
#32. 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
#34. It's a lucky child that knows that they're a genius, unaimed and all that.
Diana Wynne Jones
#36. 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
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. This does make me very very careful, particularly in the second draft, to get it right, because you do feel that somebody in the future who may be extremely important for everybody, is going to have me behind them, and this is a responsibility, a huge one.
Diana Wynne Jones
#43. 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
#44. That can go in the cabinet, and so can this One Ring. No, don't put it on, you fool! It's dangerous!
Diana Wynne Jones
#45. I was relying on Suliman being alive.THen when all that seemed to be left of him was Percival, I was so scared I had to go out and get drunk. And then you go and play into the Witch's hand!" "I'm the eldest!" Sophie shrieked. "I'm a failure!" "Garbage!" Howl shouted. "You just never stop to think!
Diana Wynne Jones
#46. But I discovered that people like me
they do, you know, if you like them
and then it was all right.
Diana Wynne Jones
#47. Jamal stared at the dog in his arms. Why I am I holding a dog full of angels?
Diana Wynne Jones
#50. SAGE. A wise and Holy man who died a long time ago. No one modern qualifies.
Diana Wynne Jones
#51. 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
#52. In a way it was worth it, she thought, except that it was such a total waste.
Diana Wynne Jones
#55. 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
#56. Of course you hate getting angry!" she retorted. "You don't like anything unpleasant, do you? You're a slitherer-outer, that's what you are! You slither away from anything you don't like!
Diana Wynne Jones
#57. 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
#58. Howl's voice was presently heard shouting weakly, Help me, someone! I'm dying from neglect up here!
Diana Wynne Jones
#59. 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
#60. 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
#63. Funny the way it was never enough to swear and promise just the once. You seemed to have to rethink and repromise every time the subject came up.
Diana Wynne Jones
#64. 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
#65. It is quite a risk to spank a wizard for getting hysterical about his hair.
Diana Wynne Jones
#66. Things are going round and round in my head
or maybe my head is going round and round in things.
Diana Wynne Jones
#67. He scarcely saw his parents. When Christopher was small, he was terrified that he would meet Papa out walking in the Park one day and not recognize him.
Diana Wynne Jones
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. You've no right to walk into people's castles and take their guitars.
Diana Wynne Jones
#72. You go and find who you really are, and don't let anyone stop you.
Diana Wynne Jones
#73. I've often noticed" Fiona said, "that when people say, 'This can't happen in this day and age', they say it because it is happening.
Diana Wynne Jones
#74. 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
#76. Oh confound that gray-and-scarlet suit!" Sophie said. "I refuse to believe that I was the one that got caught with it!
Diana Wynne Jones
#78. I'm delirious. Spots are crawling before my eyes."
"Those are spiders.
Diana Wynne Jones
#79. But most dragons seem to have interesting personalities
besides probably having quite good reasons for what they do, if only one could understand them
Diana Wynne Jones
#80. Doors are very powerful things. Things are different on either side of them.
Diana Wynne Jones
#81. After that, he tried to go upstairs through the broom cupboard, and then the yard. This seemed to puzzle him a little. But finally he discovered the stairs, all except the bottom on, and fell up them on his face. The whole castle shook.
Diana Wynne Jones
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. 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
#87. 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
#88. Typical! I break my neck trying to get here, and I find you peacefully tidying up!
Diana Wynne Jones
#89. The tiny princess glanced up with a shy smile. "Boyth, all," she said, in a small, lisping voice. Morgan's
Diana Wynne Jones
#90. A garden should be natural-seeming, with wild sections, including a large area of bluebells.
Diana Wynne Jones
#91. "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
#92. Then watch out. I warn you!"
"That is very considerate of you," said Chrestomanci. "I like to be warned.
Diana Wynne Jones
#93. People are wrong when they say things like, "I didn't have time to think." If you're really worried, or really miserable, those feelings come welling up around the edges of the other things you're doing, so that you are in the feelings even when you're working hard at something else.
Diana Wynne Jones
#94. Every man in Ingary is scared stiff of her. You ought to know how that feels, Sophie dear.
Diana Wynne Jones
#95. Goats," said Maxwell Hyde, "are a special case. Mad as hatters, all of them.
Diana Wynne Jones
#96. Oh! Polly thought. Why aren't all girls locked up by law the year they turn fifteen? They do such stupid things!
Diana Wynne Jones
#97. Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look.
Diana Wynne Jones
#98. 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
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