Diana Wynne Jones Quotes

"One person ought to treat another person properly, even if the person's himself." "What a strange idea!" Mordion said.

It looks as if you need only enter the field for long enough to recognise the bannus and take hold of it. Then you order it to stop. Fight my way through a mob of dancing girls and snatch the dulcimer off the leading damsel, Reigner Two said morbidly. I can just see myself. I think the fools who invented this thing might have thought of a simpler way to stop it. What's wrong with a red switch?

Ann looked down at him, spread on the bank preparing to go to sleep, and lost her temper. "Then you should go and tell him! You should look after him! He's all alone in this wood, and he's quite small, and he doesn't even know he's not supposed to go out of it. He probably doesn't even know how to work the field to get food. You - you calmly make him up, out of blood and - and nothing, and you expect him to do your dirty work for you, and you don't even tell him the rules! You can't do that to a person!"

"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.

It was very boring. Perhaps it was his job to be boring, Vivian thought, in which case he was very good at his job.

"If you call me V.S. once again," she said, "I shall scream - I warn you!" Sam patted her arm. "You need a butter-pie," he said kindly.

But she's too big! the anguished man said, still glaring at Vivian. This girl is not the right size! … She was six when she went away, Father, Jonathan said. He did not seem in the least alarmed. That was nearly six years ago. Think how much I've changed since then. So you have, said this alarming man, turning his glare on Jonathan as if he did not think the change was for the better. I see, he said. She grew.

"Can I eat these?" he said. "No," said Vivian. "I'm hungry." "I'll give you half," Sam said, plainly thinking he was being generous.

Vivian stared. Never had she seen a boy with such long hair! In fact, she had a vague notion that boys were born with their hair short back and sides and only girls had hair that grew long.

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

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.

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.

"Heroes see things like that," he said. "It's obviously an enchantment of some kind," Polly agreed, humouring him. "It must be," he said. It sounded as if he was humouring her.

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

If nothing happened, then there's nothing to remember, she told herself, trying to sound philosophical. Of course there's nowhere to start.