Diana Wynne Jones
34 quotes
Biography
Diana Wynne Jones was a British novelist, poet, academic, literary critic, and short story writer. She principally wrote speculative fiction novels for children and young adults.
"I think we ought to live happily ever after."
"You must admit I have a right to live in a pigsty if I want."
"Really, these wizards! You'd think no one had ever had a cold before! Well, what is it?"she asked, hobbling through the bedroom door onto the filthy carpet."I'm dying of boredom,"Howl said pathetically. "Or maybe just dying."
"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 feel ill,"[Howl] announced. "I'm going to bed, where I may die."
"To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much."
"I can't abide people who go soft over animals and then cheat every human they come across!"
"Nobody gets praised for the right reasons."
"My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me."
"Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs!"
"So you were going to rescue the Prince! Why did you pretend to run away? To deceive the Witch?""Not likely! I'm a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell myself I'm not doing it!"
"Learn to drive?""Never,"said Quentin. "My mission in life is to be a passenger."
"This is the mythosphere. It's made up of all the stories, theories and beliefs, legends, myths and hopes, that are generated here on Earth. As you can see, it's constantly growing and moving as people invent new tales to tell or find new things to believe. The older strands move out to become these spirals, where things tend to become quite crude and dangerous. They've hardened off, you see."
"The truth between two people always cuts two ways."
"Things we are accustomed to regard as myth or fairy story are very much present in people’s lives. Nice people behave like wicked stepmothers. Every day."
"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."
"The only good Dorig is a dead Dorig."
"One does not want glory accepted as a matter of course. One wants to shock and astonish people with it."
"She was one of those who could talk and talk and talk. Gair listened to her harsh voice - "Just like a duck," Ayna described it - and hoped she would lose the argument. But Adara once said Kasta had never lost an argument in her life. She just talked everyone insensible."
"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."
"You wouldn't believe how lonely you get."
""Unprintable things!" I said - only I didn't say that. I really said them."
"That was the trouble with Joris. He was nice. You ended up liking him, whatever you did. Even when you wanted to shake him till his head fell off."
"If nothing happened, then there's nothing to remember," she told herself, trying to sound philosophical. "Of course there's nowhere to start."
"Pretending was like that. Things seemed to make themselves up, once you got going."