Best 162 quotes of Diana Wynne Jones on MyQuotes

After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun.... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how.... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.' When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name.

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

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.

A library is a place full of mouth-watering food for thought.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.

Busy old fool, unruly Sophie

But I do think that when people say 'a learning curve,' they make a mistake. Learning to me always seems to go in a straight, ignorant line and then, every so often, takes a jump straight upward.

But most dragons seem to have interesting personalities--besides probably having quite good reasons for what they do, if only one could understand them

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.

But whoever heard of enchanted bacon anyway?

By this time, half the people in High Norland were gathered in Royal Square to stare at the castle. They all watched with disbelief as the castle rose slightly into the air and glided toward the road that led southward. It was hardly more than an alley, really. "It'll never fit!" people said. But the castle somehow squeezed itself narrow enough to drift away along it and out of sight. The citizens of High Norland gave it a cheer as it went.

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

...don't spoil my learning process!

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

Do you mind not being so kind and obedient? It makes me nervous.

"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.

Every man in Ingary is scared stiff of her. You ought to know how that feels, Sophie dear.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Howl has been very kind to me." And this was true, Sophie realized. Howl showed his kindness rather strangely, but, considering all Sophie did to annoy him, he had been very good to her indeed. "Do listen. He's not wicked at all!" There was a bit of a fizz from the grate at this, where Calcifer was watching with some interest. " He isn't!" Sophie said, to Calcifer as much as to Fanny.

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?

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.

I am a total zombie just after I wake up. It takes me half an hour even to get my eyes open. Ask anyone who knows me. I can't see; I can't talk properly; I can't do anything without help. The only think I can do properly is think. And I know how to exploit my condition. I've had years of practice.

I can't abide people who go soft over animals and then cheat every human they come across!

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.

I don’t think I will get married,” Polly said as she stood up. “I’m going to train to be a hero instead.

...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.

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!

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

I'll show you how," Peter said. "Stop hiding behind your ignorance.

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.

I’m beginning to think I’ve led a much too sheltered life.

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!