Diana Wynne Jones Quotes

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

Busy old fool, unruly Sophie ~ Diana Wynne Jones

The pityingly look made Sophie utterly ashamed. He was such a dashing specimen too, with a bony, sophisticated face
really quite oold, well into his twenties
and elaborate blond hair. His sleeves trailed longer than any in the Square, all scalloped edges and silver insets. "Oh, no thank you, if you please, sir," Sophie stammered. "I
I'm only on my way to see my sister." "Then by all means do so," laughed this advanced young man. "Who am i to keep a pretty lady from her sister? Would you like me to go with you, since you seemed so cared?" He meant it kindly, which made Sophie, more ashamed than ever. "No. No thank you, sir!" she gasped and fled away past him. He wore perfume too. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

I could cut a star out of paper and drop it. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

FOOD: See STEW, SCURVY, STEW, WAYBREAD (also known as Journey Cake) and STEW - though there are occasional BIRDS, FISH, RABBITS and pieces of cheese. Generally the diet is an unvaried one, although MARSH DWELLERS can work wonders with ROOTS. Puddings are unknown except occasionally in the Courts of KINGS. Tourists who suffer from diabetes should be quite safe. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Chrestomanci smiled and swept out of the room like a very long procession of one person. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

SHE LIKES MY SPARK!!!!--Calcifer ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

It was time for a strong-minded woman to take charge. Abdullah was quite glad that Sophie was one. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

I am really very grateful for this Award. It is one of the first given to a woman, and to two women at that. When I first started getting work published, I used to have wistful thoughts at the way all important awards were given to men. Women, I used to think, could be as innovative, imaginative and productive as possible - and women were the ones mostly at work in the field of fantasy for children and young adults - but only let a man enter the field, and people instantly regarded what he had to say and what he did as more Important. He got respectful reviews as well as awards, even if what he was doing - which it often was - was imitating the women. But you have changed all that.
Thank you for being so enlightened.
Women, large-minded, formidable women, have played an almost exclusive part in helping my career. I have hardly ever dealt with a man - at least, when it came to publishing: ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Doors are very powerful things. Things are different on either side of them. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

A library is a place full of mouth-watering food for thought. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Nobody gets praised for the right reasons. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

Lettie, as the second daughter, was never likely to come to much, ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Everybody at a university was to her a professor, unless they were students of course, and therefore even worse. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

This carpet," said Abdullah, "unlike you, is of an ensorcellment so pure and excellent that it will listen only to the finest of language. It is at heart a poet among carpets."
A certain smugness spread through the pile of the carpet. It held its tattered edges proudly straight and sailed sweetly forward into the golden sunlight above the mist. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

I hate dialect. It gets in the way. If there is a need for dialect, you can render it quite easily by reproducing the rythm of that form of speech. Then you don't need to bother with silly spellings ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Typical! I break my neck trying to get here, and I find you peacefully tidying up! ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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!" It dived away from Michael's fingers. Michael plunged for it, but it was too quick for him. It swooped for the nearest marsh pool, and the black water leaped into a blaze of whiteness for just an instant. Then there was a small, dying sizzle. When Sophie hobbled over, Michael was standing watching the last light fade out of a little round lump under the dark water. "That was sad," Sophie said. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

It does not seem to me that I have the right to foist a story on people, most of whom are children who should be learning all the time, unless I am learning from it too. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

If you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

This book will prove the following ten facts:
1. A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there.
2. Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch.
3. All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
4. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the result is a family fight.
5. Music does not always sooth the troubled beast.
6. An Englishman's home is his castle.
7. The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
8. One black eye deserves another.
9. Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm.
10. It pays to increase your word power. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

And it's a pity too that I've no right to open your letters. I hope you don't get many, or my conscience will give me no peace. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Fantasy for me as a kid was real, and I had a fantasy about what life was, whether it was sort of wicked and dire, or wholly normal, or whatever. Anything really close to home is not, it seems to me, what a good book should be about. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

I'm delirious. Spots are crawling before my eyes."
"Those are spiders. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

I've been feeling rather bloodthirsty lately, and saving the world seemed a good way to use it. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

People kept coming up to her all day, saying, "Is it true what Nina says - you come from a broken home?"
"Broken right in half," Polly replied to each one. "There's a hole in the middle where the garden is. You get rained on trying togo upstairs." (p. 154) ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Imagination doesn't just mean making things up. It means thinking things through, solving them, or hoping to do so, and being just distant enough to be able to laugh at things that are normally painful. Head teachers would call this escapism, but they would be entirely wrong. I would call fantasy the most serious, and the most useful, branch of writing there is. And this is why I don't, and never would, write Real Books. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

Yes. I was looking for Lettie. They were both very kind to me," Percival said, "Even though they'd never seen me before. And Wizard Howl kept visiting to court Lettie. Lettie didn't want him, and she asked me to bite him to get rid of him, until Howl suddenly began asking her about you and - "
"what?"
he said, " I know someone called sophie who looks a little like you.. And Lettie said, that's my sister,' without thinking," Percival said. " And she got terribly worried then, particularly as Howl went on asking about her sister. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

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

If the spell was off, I'd have my heart eaten before I could turn around."
"Don't you want your heart eaten?" asked the fire. [ ... ]
"Naturally I don't," Sophie answered. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

The truth between two people always cuts two ways. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

You know this could kill me, don't you?'
'Look on the bright side,' said Howl. 'It could be me it kills. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Sophie knew Howl could sound unhappy in heaven if it suited him. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Howl said, "I think we ought to live happily ever after," and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would make a good deal more eventful than any story made it sound, though she was determined to try. "It should be hair-raising," added Howl. "And you'll exploit me," Sophie said. "And then you'll cut up all my suits to teach me," added Howl. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

I put my arms round her. For just a mere, single instant I had a real, heavy body in my arms and a moist face against my cheek, with a real, difficult personality to go with them. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

My mother brought me up to be respectable," she said. "She never let me near the scullery, or the kitchen either."
"I don't believe this!" Peter said. "Why is it respectable not to know how to do things? Is it respectable to light a fire with a bar of soap? ~ Diana Wynne Jones

They knew that if, as a child, you do pluck up the courage to hit a bully, it is an act of true heroism--as great as that of Beowulf in his old age. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

How can I preach Dissolution?" he said. "How can I not believe in the gods when I have seen them for myself?"
"That's a question you certainly should be asking," Chrestomanci croaked. "Go down to Theare and ask it." Thasper nodded and turned to go. Chrestomanci leaned towards him and said from behind his handkerchief, "Ask yourself this too: Can the gods catch flu? I think I may have given it to all of them. Find out and let me know, there's a good chap. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

You have an instinct, Sophie, that's how," said Howl. "Nothing is safe from you. If I were to court a girl who lived on an iceberg in the middle of the ocean, sooner or later - probably sooner - I'd look up to see you swooping overhead on a broomstick. In fact, by now I'd be disappointed in you if I didn't see you. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

If you knew the trouble we've had because Howl will keep falling in love like this! We've had lawsuits, and suitors with swords, and mothers with rolling pins, and fathers and uncles with cudgels. And aunts. Aunts are terrible. They go for you with hat pins. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

My shining dishonesty will be my salvation ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Howl pointed a shaky hand up toward the canopy of his bed. "That's why I love spiders. 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, again.' I keep trying," he said with great sadness. "But I brought it on myself by making a bargain some years ago, and I know I shall never be able to love anyone properly now."
The water running out of Howl's eyes was definitely tears now. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

She was remorseless, but she lacked method. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

You can tell them you're a Homeward Bounder. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

This wood," Yam told him, "is like human memory. It does not need to take events in their correct order. Do you wish to go to an earlier time and start from there?"
"Would I understand more if I did?" Hume asked.
"You might," said Yam. "Both of us might."
"Then it's worth a try," Hume agreed.
They went together down the left-hand fork. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

I think we ought to live happily ever after. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

He held out his hand to Sophie, just like Mrs. Pentstemmon, but a little less royally. Sophie levered herself up, wondering if she was meant to kiss this hand or not. But since she felt more like raising her stick and beating the King over the head with it, she shook the King's hand and gave a creaking little curtsy. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

It seems that Fate has decreed that I live through my entire daydream in reality! ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Is something the matter?" Calcifer asked.
"Yes. My heart. There was a scarecrow at the door!" Sophie gasped.
"What has a scarecrow to do with your heart?" Calcifer asked.
"It was trying to get in here. It gave me a terrible fright. And my heart - but you wouldn't understand, you silly young demon!" Sophie panted. "You haven't got a heart."
"Yes I have," Calcifer said, as proudly as he had revealed his arm. "Down in the glowing part under the logs. And don't call me young. I'm a good million years older than you are! Can I reduce the speed of the castle now? ~ Diana Wynne Jones

I can't wear thethe! I want my thtwipey oneth! ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

Theseus made unscrupulous use of Ariadne (whom he left on an island where Bacchus later found her-I always think that really meant she took to drink, poor girl). ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Annoyed?" said Sophie. "Why should I be annoyed? Someone only filled the castle with rotten aspic, and deafened everyone in Porthaven, and scared Calcifer to a cinder, and broke a few hundred hearts. Why should that annoy me? ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Sorry I gave you a fright." Howl seemed more used to holding babies than Sophie was. He rocked Morgan soothingly and stared at him. Morgan stared, rather balefullt, back. "My word, he's ugly" Howl said. "Chip off the old block" "Howl!" said Sophie. But she did not sound angry. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

You shone like a star. The funniest, wisest writer & the finest friend ~ Neil Gaiman

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

That's why I love spiders. 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Howl's voice was presently heard shouting weakly, Help me, someone! I'm dying from neglect up here! ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Controller Borasus sighed with relief. Libraries were not places of danger. It had to be a hoax. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

Please, your story, or I shall offend the dignitaries of my kingdom by yawning at holy things. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Dear Chant,
The same to you. Go to blazes.
Chrestomanci ~ Diana Wynne Jones

"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

So you eat them. And don't try chucking them away. I'll know. I empty the bins. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

What a strange family you are! Is your name Lettie too? ~ Diana Wynne Jones

I don't ever remember being afraid of "oldness".

There are things I miss about being younger - chiefly the ability to pull all-nighters and keep working and working well; and being smiled at by girls I didn't know who thought I was cute; and I wish I had the eyesight I had even five years ago… but that stuff feels pretty trivial.

I'm happier than I've been at any time in my life these days. I have a wonderful wife whom I adore, watched three amazing kids grow into two delightful adults and my favourite teenager, an astonishing number of grand life experiences, I've made art I'm proud of, I have real, true, glorious friends, and I've been able to do real good for things I care about, like freedom of speech, like libraries.

Sometimes I'll do something like An Evening With Neil and Amanda, or the 8 in 8 project, and completely surprise myself.

I miss friends who have died, but then, I'm glad that time gave them to me, to befriend, even for a while, and that I was alive to know them. I knew Douglas Adams, and I knew Roger Zelazny, and I knew John M Ford, and I knew Diana Wynne Jones… do you know how lucky that makes me?

Ah, I'm rabbiting on, and I sound a bit more Pollyannaish than I'm intending to sound: I know the downside of age and the downside of time, and I am sure that the view from age 51 is not the view from age 71.

I wish the time hadn't gone so fast, though. And sometimes I wish I'd enjoyed it more on t ~ Neil Gaiman

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

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

I think it was then that it dawned on me that Mum wasn't going to notice Chris was missing. She has been made so that she thinks Chris is just round the corner all the time. She doesn't realise that she never sees him. I don't know why I didn't understand earlier. If Aunt Maria can turn Chris into a wolf, she's surely strong enough to do this to Mum- except that it seems a different kind of thing, much more natural and ordinary, and I didn't really think she could do both kinds. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

Tell me about this Wizard Howl of yours."
"He's the best wizard in Ingary or anywhere else. If he'd only had time, he would have defeated that djinn. And he's sly and selfish and vain as a peacock and cowardly, and you can't pin him down to anything."
"Indeed? Strange that you should speak so proudly such a list of vices, most loving of ladies."
"What do you mean, vices? I was just describing Howl. He comes from another world entirely, you know, called Wales, and I refuse to believe he's dead! ~ Diana Wynne Jones

NUNNERIES: The Rule is that any Nunnery you approach, particularly if you are in dire need of rest, Healing, or provisions, will prove to have been recently sacked. You will find the place a smoking ruin littered with corpses. You will be shocked and wonder who could have done such a thing. Your natural curiosity will shorty be satisfied, because there is a further Rule that there will be one survivor, either a very young NOVICE or a very old nun, who will give you a graphic account of the raping and burning and the names of the perpetrators. If old, she will then die, thus saving you from having to take her along and feed her from your dwindling provisions; if a Novice, she will either die likewise or prove to be not as nunnish as you at first thought, in which case you may be glad to have her along. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

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

You don't give hired assassins supper, do you?" Quentin smiled. "No, but when a wolf follows your sleigh, you give it meat," he ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

Goats," said Maxwell Hyde, "are a special case. Mad as hatters, all of them. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

What did you do?" said Charles.

"You know that night all our shoes went into the hall," said Nirupam. "Well, we had a feast that night. Dan Smith made me get up the floorboards and get the food out. He says I have no right to be so large and so weak," Nirupam said resentfully, "and I was hating him for it, when I took the boards up and found a pair of running shoes, with spikes, hidden there with the food. I turned those shoes into a chocolate cake. I knew Dan was so greedy that he would eat it all himself. And he did eat it. He didn't let anyone else have any. You may have noticed that he wasn't quite himself the next day."

So much had happened to Charles that particular day, that he could not remember Dan seeming anything at all. He didn't have the heart to explain all the trouble Nirupam had caused him. "Those were my spikes," he said sadly. He wobbled along on the mop rather awed at the thought of iron spikes passing through Dan's stomach. "He must have a digestion like an ostrich!"

"The spikes were turned into cherries," said Nirupam. "The soles were the cream. The shoes as a whole became what is called a Black Forest gateau. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Meanwhile a certain amount of moaning and groaning was coming from upstairs. Sophie kept muttering to the dog and ignored it. A loud, hollow coughing followed, dying away into more moaning. Crashing sneezes followed the coughing, each one rattling the window and all the doors. Sophie found those harder to ignore, but she managed. Poot-pooooot! went a blown nose, like a bassoon in a tunnel. The coughing started again, mingled with moans. Sneezes mixed with the moans and the coughs, and the sounds rose to a crescendo in which Howl seemed to be managing to cough, groan, blow his nose, sneeze, and wail gently all at the same time. The doors rattled, the beams in the ceiling shook, and one of Calcifer's logs rolled off onto the hearth.
"All right, all right, I get the message!" Sophie said, dumping the log back into the grate. "It'll be green slime next". ~ Diana Wynne Jones

She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

When have you looked?" said Sophie.
"Oh, how your rears flap and your long nose twitches", Howl croaked. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

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

I've seen golems. They don't behave like a real person. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

All I did was ask you for a role-playing game. You never warned me I'd be pitched into it for real! And I asked you for hobbits on a grail quest, and not one hobbit have I seen! ~ Diana Wynne Jones