Top 100 Jonathan Stroud Quotes
#1. She's her?' - Lucy
'Exactly. Penelope Fittes is Marissa Fittes. They're one and the same person.' - The Skull
Jonathan Stroud
#2. Pardon me, Highness, a women waits whithout."
"Whithout what?
Jonathan Stroud
#3. She was so radiant, it was like the other-light was already on her.
Jonathan Stroud
#4. They were hot, itchy, and hard to see out of, plus the wool covered our mouths and made it difficult to speak. Aside from that, it was a joy to wear them.
Jonathan Stroud
#5. Many weighty books on magic that looked as if they had been bound in human skin at the beginning of time but had probably been mass-produced last week by a factory in Catford.
Jonathan Stroud
#6. There was a devotion to detail here that could only come with genuine affection, perhaps even with love.
Jonathan Stroud
#7. Her clarity gave her purpose and her purpose gave her clarity.
Jonathan Stroud
#8. It wasn't the body," he said. "I've seen worse things in our fridge.
Jonathan Stroud
#9. Someone at Portland Row really missed you, you know... Me. - Holly
Jonathan Stroud
#10. Check out that one at the end. He's taken the form of a footstool. Weird ... but somehow I like his style."
"That is a footstool.
Jonathan Stroud
#11. Okay ... ' I hurried on. 'But why me?'
'You're a girl,' Lockwood called. 'Aren't you supposed to be more sensitive?'
'To emotions, yes. To nuances of human behavior. Not necessarily to secret passages in a wall.'
'Oh, it's much the same thing.
Jonathan Stroud
#12. What, are you queuing now? Just how British are you people? Don't just stand in line! Kill somebody!
Jonathan Stroud
#14. Ah, you coward! Look at you, running." "Actually, it's called improvising.
Jonathan Stroud
#15. When I was young, I kept a diary for about 10 years and I had to write in it every day. Even on days when nothing seemed to happen, I made myself think of something to put in it.
Jonathan Stroud
#16. John Mandrake was an attractive young man, and the scent of power hung about him, sweet and intoxicating, like honeysuckle in the evening air.
Jonathan Stroud
#17. The stories that bind us, Halli. The stories we live by, that dictate what we do and where we go. The stories that give us our names, our identities, the places we belong, the people we hate.
Jonathan Stroud
#18. Yes, all the inhabitants of the store had left. But that didn't mean we were alone.
Jonathan Stroud
#19. He was a worried man (I'm stretching the term a bit here, I know. By now, in his mid to late teens, he might just about have passed for a man. When seen from behind. At a distance. On a very dark night).
Jonathan Stroud
#20. It was Nathaniel's boundless capacity for stating the obvious that made him so charmingly human.
Jonathan Stroud
#21. Despite his crimped shirts and flowing mane (or perhaps because of them) I had seen no evidence as yet that Nathaniel even knew what a girl was. If he'd ever met one, chances are they'd both have run screaming in opposite directions.
Jonathan Stroud
#22. I wanted to wake you straightaway, but I knew I had to wait several hours to ensure you were safely recovered."
"What! How long has it been?"
"Five minutes. I got bored.
Jonathan Stroud
#23. The mercenary finished his coffee in a single gulp, It must have been piping hot, too. Boy, he was tough.
Jonathan Stroud
#24. When I write something that would have made me laugh as a 10-year-old, or would have scared me or would have excited me, I know I'm onto something.
Jonathan Stroud
#25. Julius Tallow was a fool. He appeared complacent, but like a weak swimmer out of his depth, his legs were kicking frantically under the surface, trying to keep him afloat. Whatever happened, Nathaniel did not intend to sink with him.
Jonathan Stroud
#26. A word of friendly advice could have saved him, but dear me, I was too busy watching him unravel to think of it until it was far too late.
Jonathan Stroud
#27. It's the same with spirit guises; show me a sweet little choirboy or a smiling mother and I'll show you the hideous fanged strigoi it really is. (Not always. Just sometimes. *Your* mother is absolutely fine, for instance. Probably.)
Jonathan Stroud
#28. Death is fugitive; even when you're watching for it, the actual instant somehow slips between your fingers. You don't get that sudden drop of the head you see in movies. Instead you simply sit there, waiting for something to happen, and all at once you realize you've missed it.
Jonathan Stroud
#29. I used to have quite long hair, and I decided that I wanted to get it cut. I'd never met the person who did it, and she cut it into some kind of dreadful mullet. It looked like a triangle on my head. The other kids were merciless.
Jonathan Stroud
#30. My wife gave me a year to start making money out of writing, and after six months, I'd made not a bean. Suddenly, the books took off, and the beans started coming in!
Jonathan Stroud
#31. The bristling eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. Mesmerized, the boy watched them disappear under the hanging thatch of white hair. There, almost coyly, they remained just out of sight for a moment, before suddenly descending with a terrible finality and weight.
Jonathan Stroud
#32. Jabor finally appeared at the top of the stairs, sparks of flame radiating from his body and igniting the fabric of the house around him. He caught sight of the boy, reached out his hand and stepped forward.
And banged his head nicely on the low-slung attic door.
Jonathan Stroud
#34. He was transfixed at the sight of the lords and ladies of his realm running about like demented chickens.
Jonathan Stroud
#35. What have they done to your poor arm?' - Holly
'Oh, don't worry, it's just a graze.' - Lucy
'I'm talking about the bandages. That's simply the most incompetent bit of first aid I've ever seen. Lockwood, George - how much dressing did you use?
Jonathan Stroud
#36. The mole dug its way deep, deep down, under the foundations of the wall. No magical alarm sounded, though I did hit my head five times on a pebble.
Once each on five different pebbles. Not the same pebble five times. Just want to make that clear. Sometimes you human beings are so dense.
Jonathan Stroud
#37. I like using traditional beliefs in my fantasies, even though I always end up warping them to suit my purpose: it somehow makes everything feel more 'solid' if it's got a long history behind it.
Jonathan Stroud
#38. The important thing about any book is that you have to have a good story and that it has to be exciting. Then it's nice to add other levels underneath that people can pick up on.
Jonathan Stroud
#39. This was classic Lockwood. Friendly, considerate, empathetic. My personal impulse would have been to slap the girl soundly around the face and boot her moaning backside out into the night. Which is why he's the leader, and I'm not. Also why I have no female friends.
Jonathan Stroud
#40. Then again, Solomon was human. And that meant he was flawed (Go on, take a look at yourself in the mirror. A good long look, if you can bear it. See? Flawed's putting it mildly, isn't it?)
Jonathan Stroud
#41. I wasn't pretty, but as my mother once said, prettiness wasn't my profession.
Jonathan Stroud
#42. I'ts how I want to remember him, the way he was that night: with horrors up ahead and horrors at our back, and Lockwood standing in between them, calm and unafraid.
Jonathan Stroud
#43. Me, I was still in the pygmy hippo in a skirt, singing lusty songs about Solomon's private life and a giant stone back and forth through the air as I climbed out of the quarry at the edge of the site.
Jonathan Stroud
#44. His face was uniquely slapable - a nun would have ached to punch him - while his backside cried out to heaven for a well-placed kick.
Jonathan Stroud
#45. As an author, you need to keep talking to your audience to remind yourself what they like and what they don't like. You spend most of your life locked in a room, and you need to be social occasionally.
Jonathan Stroud
#46. How d'you want me to put it? You waltzed off on a whim and left us to pick up the pieces. Now you suddenly swan back and expect us to carry on where we left off! You can't have it both ways--either we were affected by your departure or we weren't. Which do you prefer?
Jonathan Stroud
#47. According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, composed, unflappable, manly, or defiant you are, at the end of the day you're also dead. Which is a little too permanent for my liking.
Jonathan Stroud
#48. Minor magicians take pains to fit this traditional wizardly bill. By contrast, the really powerful magicians take pleasure in looking like accountants.
Jonathan Stroud
#49. Well, with luck we'll miss the beginning of the performance.
Jonathan Stroud
#50. When I think about my ideal free day, it usually involves going into London and sitting in a nice coffeehouse with cake and coffee, but I would probably still have my notebook in my pocket.
Jonathan Stroud
#51. Lockwood gave a sudden exclamation; when I looked at him, his eyes were shining. 'On second thoughts, we can scrap my last suggestion,' he said. 'Stuff the mingling. Who wants to do that? Boring. George - this library. Where is it?
Jonathan Stroud
#53. So I departed, leaving behind a pungent smell of brimstone. Just something to remember me by.
Jonathan Stroud
#54. Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style.
Jonathan Stroud
#55. Well, I make that one murder victim, one police interrogation and one conversation with a ghost," George said. "Now that's what I call a busy evening."
Lockwood nodded. "To think some people just watch television.
Jonathan Stroud
#56. One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror.
Jonathan Stroud
#57. More ghosts have been created in bedrooms than anywhere else.
Jonathan Stroud
#58. The boy was silent as we went. Unsurprising, this - he had seldom left London in his life before. I guessed him to be gazing about in dumbstruck admiration.
"What an appalling place," he [Nathaniel] said. - Bartimaeus
Jonathan Stroud
#59. Long ago I dreamed of being a hero in your company" Halli said Huskily "I'm sorry to say your reality disappoints me
Jonathan Stroud
#60. I like to have my characters talking in an up-to-date way, and I like their essentially modern self-awareness, which means we can have lots of irony and jokes.
Jonathan Stroud
#61. Burned and squashed to death in a silver vat of soup. There must be worst ways to go. But not many.
Jonathan Stroud
#62. If anyone else asked that question, O He Who Is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of the disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue.
Jonathan Stroud
#64. A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.
Jonathan Stroud
#65. Oh, we'll suffer in silence. You've given us plenty of practice at that.
Jonathan Stroud
#66. Is it just me,' Kipps said, 'or does that boy need punching?'
'It's not just you.
Jonathan Stroud
#67. The Hermit was known to be pretty sniffy about disciples who returned in failure. There was a wall of the institute layered with their skins- an ingenious display that encouraged vigor in his students, as well as nicely keeping out the drafts.
Jonathan Stroud
#68. Getting that first draft out is a horribly hard grind, but that (perversely) is where the joy of it lies.
Jonathan Stroud
#69. Penelope Fittes - " "Has got nothing whatsoever to do with it, as you well know. It was Lockwood who came knocking on your door, and that's why you considered the proposal, and let's face it, that's why you said yes.
Jonathan Stroud
#70. The Amulet of Samarkand. It was Simon Lovelace's. Now it is yours. Soon it will be Simon Lovelace's again. Take it and enjoy the consequences.
Jonathan Stroud
#71. You're not our leader,' Dave said.
'No, but I know what I'm doing, which is a nice alternative.' - Lucy
Jonathan Stroud
#72. Really?"
"No. I'm being ironic. Or is it sarcastic? I can never remember."
"Irony's cleverer, so you're probably being sarcastic.
Jonathan Stroud
#73. I'm sorry, Miraculous One, it's difficult to think of new titles for you when you ask short questions.
Jonathan Stroud
#74. And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.
Jonathan Stroud
#75. George,' I croaked, 'are you okay?'
'No. Someone's buttocks are flattening my foot.'
I shifted my position irritably.
Jonathan Stroud
#76. At Lockwood & Co., George was famous for not being able to throw or catch with any accuracy. Back in the kitchen at Portland Row, even the casual passing out of fruit or bags of chips became an exercise fraught with danger.
Jonathan Stroud
#77. Watch where you leave your victims! I stubbed my toe on that.
Jonathan Stroud
#78. Haven't you done enough for a lifetime? Think about it - two power - crazed magicians killed, a hundred power - crazed magicians saved ...
Jonathan Stroud
#79. To my astonishment I saw him standing at a table with Kitty Jones. It was the Kitty Jones bit that was astonishing. Not the table. Though it was very nicely polished.
Jonathan Stroud
#80. But Holly the gun-toting, wild-haired madwoman of the night before was in there somewhere, I knew. It made me look upon her with fond affection.
Jonathan Stroud
#81. It was one of those moments when a great Don't Care wave hits you, and you float off on it, head back, looking at the sky.
Jonathan Stroud
#82. Well, when you're being held at gunpoint by a geriatric madman in a metal skirt, you've kind of hit rock bottom anyway. It can't really get much worse.
Jonathan Stroud
#83. Never touch a mummified body part if you don't know where it's been. That's my motto." [- Lockwood]
"Holds true with unmummified ones too," George said. "That's the motto I live by.
Jonathan Stroud
#84. They passed a succession of granite monuments to the conquering magicians of the late Victorian age and the fallen heroes of the Great War, then a few monolithic sculptures representing Ideal Virtues (Patriotism, Respect for Authority, the Dutiful Wife).
Jonathan Stroud
#85. Thus, those with long and glittering careers (e.g. me) tend to look down on those (e.g. Ascobol) whose names have been unearthed more recently, and haven't amassed so many fine achievements.
Jonathan Stroud
#86. That's usually how they start, the young ones. Meaningless waffle.
Jonathan Stroud
#87. There was a loud cough from the man on the stand. I replaced My Magic Mirror carefully on his tray, gave him a cheesy smile, and went my way.
Jonathan Stroud
#88. What was it that drew you back? My marvellous personality, I suppose? Or my sparkling conversation?
Jonathan Stroud
#89. I - though forced through lack of space to assume the form of a stoic guinea pig crouched between the girl's shoe and the glove compartment - was my usual dignified self.
Jonathan Stroud
#90. Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.
Jonathan Stroud
#92. Most traditional ghost stories feature rather hapless protagonists, who have nasty things happen to them.
Jonathan Stroud
#93. Isn't it hard to maintain an argument when you can read each other's mind?
Jonathan Stroud
#94. In my youth, I was always one for the dramatic entrance. Now, in keeping with my character, I gravitate more toward the subtle and refined. Okay, with the occasional feathered serpent thrown in.
Jonathan Stroud
#95. I got fairly good grades, but I was bad at woodwork. They said I tried hard, but the result was hopeless.
Jonathan Stroud
#96. At last! Am I glad to see you! Right, stab this guy quickly, and let's be going.
Jonathan Stroud
#97. When I set out from the boy's attic window, my head was so full of competing plans and complex stratagems that I didn't look where I was going and flew straight into a chimney.
Something symbolic in that. It's what fake freedom does for you.
Jonathan Stroud
#98. It's a curious thing with George. With his glasses off, his eyes looked small and weak - blinky and a bit baffled, like an unintelligent sheep that's taken a wrong turn. But when he put them on again, they went all sharp and steely, more like the eyes of an eagle that eats dumb sheep for breakfast.
Jonathan Stroud
#100. We grow up being told about great figures in our society, and as you get older you have to question the stories you've been told and decide if these great figures are indeed as great as you've been told.
Jonathan Stroud
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