Diana Wynne Jones Quotes

Oh, thank goodness! he babbled. I didn't mean it - at least I did, but I don't mean it now, not any more! He flung one arm around Yam and twisted the other into Mordion's rolled cloak. They came. They rustled. Don't let them!

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.

Pretending was like that. Things seemed to make themselves up, once you got going.

People may wonder how Mitt came to join in the Holand Sea Festival, carrying a bomb, and what he thought he was doing. Mitt wondered himself by the end.

I had a mitherable childhood. Nobody loved me. I think I have a right to try again, looking pwettier, don't you?

There was a little white statue there. Now I'm not artistic. I saw it was of a fellow with no clothes on - I always wonder why it's Art to take your clothes off: they never put in the goose pimples - and this fellow was wrapped in chains. He didn't look as if he was enjoying himself, and small wonder.

"Oh, Lord! He's a weeper!" Grandad said disgustedly. "I wish I'd known. I'd have stayed away." "A lot of Merlins have cried when they prophesied," Dad pointed out. "I know. But I don't have to like it, do I?" Grandad retorted.

Dear Polly, Tom wishes you, for some reason I can't understand, to consider the human back. He says there are many other matters you should consider too, but that was a particularly glaring example. He invites you, he says, to walk along a beach this summer and watch the male citizens there sunning themselves. There you will see backs - backs stringy, backs bulging, and backs with ingrained dirt. You will find, he says, yellow skin, blackheads, pimples, enlarged pores and tufts of hair. This is making me ill, but Tom says go on. Peeling sunburn, warts, boils, moles and midge bites and floppy rolls of skin. Even a back without these blemishes, he claims, seldom or never ripples, unless with gooseflesh. In fact, he defies you to find an inch of silk or a single powerful muscle in any hundred yards of average sunbathers. I hope you know what all this is about, because I don't. I think you should stay away from the seaside if you can. Yours ever, Sam.

If you stood up and told the truth in the wrong way, it was not true any longer, though it might be as powerful as ever.

Maybe, he said, you should be more careful about whom you let your dog bite. Not I! said Jamal. I am a believer of free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so.

I never said my wishes were supposed to do anyone any good, said the genie. In fact, I swore that they would always do as much harm as possible.

"Unprintable things!" I said - only I didn't say that. I really said them.

Tell me of this Wizard Howl of yours. Sophie's teeth chattered, but she said proudly, 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? asked Abdullah. Strange that you should speak so proudly such a list of vices, most loving of ladies. What do you mean — vices? Sophie asked angrily. I was just describing Howl.

"Look here," Gerald said, "what do you think of Giants?" There was the kind of pause that happens when people do not like to say what they really think.

"Curse those two time-ghosts!" he almost shrieked. "They made me quite sure you were the Time Lady! But you're not, are you? I could tell you were a real Twenty Century person with every word you said. Mickey Mouse!" he yelled.