Quotes from Joan Aiken

since each child reads only about six hundred books in the course of childhood, each book should nourish them in some way - with new ideas, insight, humor, or vocabulary.

Words are like spices. Too many is worse than too few.

Why do we want to have alternate worlds? It's a way of making progress. You have to imagine something before you do it.

When the Whispering Mountain shall scream aloud And the castle of Malyn ride on a cloud, Then Malyn's lord shall have and hold The lost that is found, the harp of gold. Then Fig-hat Ben shall wear a shroud, Then shall the despoiler, that was so proud, Plunge headlong down from Devil's Leap; Then shall the Children from darkness creep, And the men of the glen avoid disaster, And the Harp of Teirtu find her master.

It was dusk - winter dusk. Snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills, and icicles hung from the forest trees. Snow lay piled on the dark road across Willoughby Wold, but from dawn men had been clearing it with brooms and shovels. There were hundreds of them at work, wrapped in sacking because of the bitter cold, and keeping together in groups for fear of the wolves, grown savage and reckless from hunger.

Her smile was like a swift light passing across a darkened room. ("Hair")

Trees are swayed by winds, men by words.

No moral to this story, you will be saying, and I am afraid it is true.

Why do we want to have alternate worlds? It's a way of making progress.

You may think it odd that there were three men to look after one tiny station, but the people who ran the railway knew that if you left two men together in a lonely place they would quarrel, but if you left three men, two of them could always grumble to each other about the third, and then they would be quite happy.

the silence behind her was closing and thickening, and becoming coloured, like water into which a brilliant dye is being poured

If reading becomes a bore, mental death is on the way.

Eat an apple,sing a song, Don't touch a snake as it wriggles along. Run for an hour, walk for a day, Hark to the birds and heed what they say.

But this is your home' 'Not any longer, my poppet. Women make nests but men make bequests and scatter them. Heigh-ho!

Very good. Couldn't be better. We'll put some ginger in the good lady's gravy.