Quotes from Diana Wynne Jones

Some people are thoroughly self-centred. This thing goes with me. I need it for moral support.

But I want to read a book ! Charmain protested.

A heart's a heavy burden

People Sophie had known all her life came and bought flowers by the bundle. None of them recognized her, and that made her feel very odd.

A very short burst of thought was enough to convince Abdullah that his situation, despite the chains, would be very much worse if he became a toad.

On Wednesday, for variety, he accosted Andrew as Andrew went out to check the state of the garden walls and presented a further cardboard box containing ten kilos of tomatoes and a squash like a deformed head of a baby.

Aidan was fascinated by Mr. Stock's hat. Perhaps it had once been a trilby sort of thing. It may once hace even been a definite color. Now it was more like something that had grown - like a fungus - on Mr. Stock's head, so mashed and used and rammed down by earthy hands that you could have thought it was a mushroom that had accidentally grown into a sort of gnome-hat. It had a slightly domed top and a floppy edge. And a definite smell

My mother says that laundry breeds if you don't wash it.

After this, Boy became very curious about the mansion where the clothes and the food came from. He made me describe everything. Then he asked Good Thing 'Are there books in this mansion, too?' 'And pictures and jewels,' Good Thing said through me. 'What does Master wish me to fetch? There is a golden harp, a musical box like a bird, a—' 'Just books,' said Boy. 'I need to learn. I'm still so ignorant.

Be daffodils in June, you beastly things!

She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future. It was a disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough

Apply your fiendish mind to the matter, said Howl. Or even think, if you know how.

Sophie got out the modish black-and-white, which was the only hat even remotely likely to interest this lady. The lady looked at it with contempt. "This one doesn't do anything for anybody. You're wasting my time, Miss Hatter." "Only because you came in and asked for hats," Sophie said.

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?

and said grace in Welsh. It was all rolling, thundering language.

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.

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.

He lied about that. He didn't want to annoy you. He's a slitherer-outer, if you know what I mean, Your Majesty.

She had said Sophie was a witch. Oddly enough, Sophie accepted this without any trouble at all. That explained the popularity of certain hats, she thought. It explained Jane Farrier's Count Whatsit. It possibly explained the jealousy of the Witch of the Waste. It was as if Sophie had always known this. But she had thought it was not proper to have a magic gift because she was the eldest of three.

City of Wizards is normally quite a GOOD thing, since only Good WIZARDS seem able to live together. . . .There have been cities of EVIL Wizards in the past. You will occasionally come across the sites of these, reduced to a glassy slag during the ultimate disagreement.

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

You owe me. You roasted my father.

In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist

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)