Top 148 Quotes & Sayings by Diana Wynne Jones

This is ridiculous, I mean, wholly ridiculous. It never did any child any harm to have something that was a tiny bit above them anyway, and I claim that anyone who can follow Doctor Who can follow absolutely anything.

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we.

Actually, in the wild, we'd be the only person that we wouldn't recognize, if you think about it.

It's a lucky child that knows that they're a genius, unaimed and all that.

It seems to me that humour is everybody's way of keeping sane and standing off from the situations so that they can see it intellectually, as well as emotionally, and I don't know whether you've noticed, but if somebody tells a joke, it's nearly always a mini fantasy.

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.

Mainly as sort of blueprints for dealing with most of the adults in their lives, to some extent with their fellows. It is this notion of aiming high and there's always hope, aim low and you might as well stop now.

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.

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.

I find it just simply takes me right back to those times, and I really can't take it, I don't want to, I mean, why should I face up to it? What good does it do me? I know it happened, and that's it.

I think one of things is that all fantasy it seems to me works the way your brain basically works. This is perhaps a startling concept, but I think it's true.

This does make me very very careful, particularly in the second draft, to get it right, because you do feel that somebody in the future who may be extremely important for everybody, is going to have me behind them, and this is a responsibility, a huge one.

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.

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

Howl’s voice was presently heard shouting weakly, “Help me, someone! I’m dying from neglect up here!

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

But I discovered that people like me -- they do, you know, if you like them -- and then it was all right.

You cannot rob robbers with a kitten in your hat!

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.

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 fickle heart is the only constant in this world

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

Then watch out. I warn you!" "That is very considerate of you," said Chrestomanci. "I like to be warned.

The truth between two people always cuts two ways.

Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.

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.

Nothing is safe from you. If I were to court a girl who lived on an iceberg in the middle of the ocean, sooner or later— probably sooner— I’d look up to see you swooping overhead on a broomstick. In fact, by now I’d be disappointed in you if I didn’t see you.” “Are you off to the iceberg today?” Sophie retorted.

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

After that, he tried to go upstairs through the broom cupboard, and then the yard. This seemed to puzzle him a little. But finally he discovered the stairs, all except the bottom on, and fell up them on his face. The whole castle shook.

It does seem that a fantasy, working out in its own terms, stretching you beyond the normal concerns of your own life, gains you a peculiar charge of energy which inexplicably enriches you. At least, this is my ideal of a fantasy, and I am always trying to write it.

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.

Things are going round and round in my head--or maybe my head is going round and round in things.

Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look.

Writing for adults, you have to keep reminding them of what is going on. The poor things have given up using their brains when they read. Children you only need to tell things to once.

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

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.

I think my moment of revelation came when I saw this young man come on court in the most flamboyant clothes. He had a sweet smile and questionably blonde hair and a generally chirpy glamour that in fact concealed huge skill. When he was interviewed he confessed to hating to get angry and it was also said that he slithered out of winning when it came to the big matches. And I thought, My God! This Andre Agassi is the image of Howl in my book HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE!

...don't spoil my learning process!

I hope your bacon burns.

It does not seem to me that I have the right to foist a story on people, most of whom are children who should be learning all the time, unless I am learning from it too.

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

There is very seldom any true secret.

"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.

You've probably all had those kinds of dreams that are like usual life, except that a lot of things are not the same, and you seem to know the future in them. Well, this is because these other worlds where two things can happen spread out from our world like rainbows, and sort of flow into one another-

It is quite a risk to spank a wizard for getting hysterical about his hair.

You've no right to walk into people's castles and take their guitars.

Settle for what you can get, but first ask for the World.

Hope is the forward-looking part of memory.

One person ought to treat another person properly, even if the person's himself.

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

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.

That's why I love spiders. 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.

Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping.

This book will prove the following ten facts: 1. A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there. 2. Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch. 3. All power corrupts, but we need electricity. 4. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the result is a family fight. 5. Music does not always sooth the troubled beast. 6. An Englishman's home is his castle. 7. The female of the species is more deadly than the male. 8. One black eye deserves another. 9. Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm. 10. It pays to increase your word power.

I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober.

I think we ought to live happily ever after.

Take it from me, Fate doesn't care most of the time.

My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.

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