Diana Wynne Jones Quotes

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.

I think we ought to live happily ever after.

To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.

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

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.

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.

She was remorseless, but she lacked method.

A heart's a heavy burden.

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.

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.

Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.

A garden should be natural-seeming, with wild sections, including a large area of bluebells.

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.

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.

My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.

I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober.

What makes you a real girl or boy is that no one laughs at you. If you are imitation or unreal, the rules give you a right to exist provided you do what the real ones or brutes say. What makes you into me or Charles Morgan is that the rules allow all the girls to be better than me and all the boys better than Charles Morgan.

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.

But I discovered that people like me -- they do, you know, if you like them -- and then it was all right.

Hope is the forward-looking part of memory.

Pray use both cats as sponges if it pleases you, infatuated infantryman.

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.

"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.

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

You've no right to walk into people's castles and take their guitars.

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.

You cannot rob robbers with a kitten in your hat!

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.

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!

Yes, you are nosy. You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all.

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?

Can't you treat yourself with a bit more consideration?' 'Why should I?' Mordion said, hugging the duvet round himself. 'Because you're a person, of course!' Ann snapped at him. 'One person ought to treat another person properly even if the person's himself!

Mr. Stock came out of the competition tent carrying his zeppelin marrow on one shoulder and demanding to know what was going on. When he saw the hordes advancing on Aidan, he charged off that way, whirling the great vegetable. The Puck, who was rushing behind the horde, yelling at them to grab Aidan and kill Rolf, was Mr. Stock's first victim. The marrow caught him THOCK! on the side of the head. It laid the Puck out cold on the grass, but the mighty vegetable remained intact, mottled and glossy

In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of the three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.

It is quite a risk to spank a wizard for getting hysterical about his hair.

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

Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs!

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.

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.

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!

There were horrendous, dramatic, violent quantities of green slime—oodles of it. It covered Howl completely. It draped his head and shoulders in sticky dollops, heaping on his knees and hands, trickling in glops down his legs, and dripping off the stool in sticky strands. It was in oozing ponds and crawling pools over most of the floor. Long fingers of it had crept into the hearth. It smelled vile.

I've got a hangover." "No, you hit your head on the floor." "I can't stay. I've got to rescue that fool Sophie.

She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word.

If I give you a hint and tell you it's a hint, it will be information.

I'm delirious. Spots are crawling before my eyes." "Those are spiders.

I feel ill," [Howl] announced. "I'm going to bed, where I may die.

You're wearing that hat? After all the magic I used to make your dress pretty?" ~Howl from the movie 'Howl's Moving Castle

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

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.

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.