Quotes from Diana Wynne Jones

May I remind you, Howard, that mens means the mind and mensa means a table? But I expect in your case the two things are the same. No, no, don't scratch your head, boy. You'll get splinters.

Anyway, Sophie's experience told her that tantrums are seldom about the thing they appear to be about.

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." After

Nobody's safe in a wizard's house.

I hate dialect. It gets in the way. If there is a need for dialect, you can render it quite easily by reproducing the rythm of that form of speech. Then you don't need to bother with silly spellings

Derk was sick of falling backward into his trench, but he never had time to invent a different way of being killed.

In the study, The Book of Palimpsest was, for some reason, now open at A Spell to Find Yourself a Handsome Prince. Charmain shook her head and closed the book. Who needs a prince? she said.

Pie in a bed of raw onions. Human skull looking put-upon. -- Howl

I am not,' he said, 'having that lummock-de-troll glunching about this place! Trod on all my tomatoes, he did, last year.

All I wanted to do was sit down and read a book, she thought, and I come home to a flood!

I may be clever, she thought, quite sadly, but I'm not in the least kind or sympathetic.

There goes Mig with her happy endings again, Chris said. But I don't care. I like happy endings. And I asked Chris why something should be truer just because it's unhappy. He couldn't answer.

You know this could kill me, don't you?' 'Look on the bright side,' said Howl. 'It could be me it kills.

Bye, pet. You go and find who you really are, and don't let anyone stop you.

It seems as if those of high ability cannot resist some extra, dangerous stroke of cleverness, which results in a fatal flaw and begins a slow decline to evil.

Look at it! It's ginger! I shall have to hide until it's grown out! Despair! Anguish! Horror!

I shall die and then you'll all be sorry.

And she stopped herself, because death is like that: people are alive until they die

Where's school? he shrieked at her. I'm missing cricket practice! For half an hour after that the hospital was in total confusion, while everyone tried to catch a five-foot corpse clothed mostly in a flying sheet, which raced up and down the corridors shrieking that it was missing cricket practice.

The silence became uneasy. It was broken by the elderly princess saying, The most distressing thing about being up here above the clouds is that there is no weather to make conversation out of.

I hope your bacon burns," Calcifer said, muffled under the pan.

It seems that Fate has decreed that I live through my entire daydream in reality!

Howl said, "I think we ought to live happily ever after," and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would be a good deal more eventful than any story made it sound, though she was determined to try.

In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.