Quotes from Diana Wynne Jones

Sorry, I've had enough of running away, Sophie. Now I've got something I want to protect. It's you.

It's amazing the way one can take a step ten and a half miles long and still always land in a cowpat.

Sophie did not care to think how Howl might react if Fanny woke him by stabbing him with her parasol.

He picked up the skull and knocked an onion ring out of its eye socket. I see Sophie has been busy again. Couldn't you have restrained her, my friend? The skull yattered its teeth at him. Howl put it down rather hastily.

All she heard next of the strange conversation behind the sofa was Mrs. Pendragon saying something about sending Twinkle (or was his name Howl?) to bed without supper and Twinkle daring her to 'jutht TRY it.

Learn to drive? Never, said Quentin. My mission in life is to be a passenger.

You have no right to make jigsaws of people.

Annoyed?" said Sophie. "Why should I be annoyed? Someone only filled the castle with rotten aspic, and deafened everyone in Porthaven, and scared Calcifer to a cinder, and broke a few hundred hearts. Why should that annoy me?

Sophie said a bad word. In the dim light she had stubbed her toe on one of the many dusty bricks piled around the place. Naughty-naughty Twinkle said. Oh shut up! Sophie said , standing on one leg to hold her toe. Why don't you grow up?

Howl backed into the door to shut it and leaned there in a tragic attitude. Look at you all! he said. Ruin stares me in the face. I slave all day for you. And not one of you, even Calcifer, can spare time to say hello! Calcifer said, I never do say hello. Is something wrong? asked Sophie. That's better, Howl said. Some of you are pretending to notice me at last. Yes, something is wrong.

I could cut a star out of paper and drop it.

Christopher discovered that you dealt with obnoxious masters and most older boys the way you dealt with governesses: you quite politely told them the truth in the way they wanted to hear it, so that they thought they had won and left you in peace.

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

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.

Doors are very powerful things. Things are different on either side of them.

I've often noticed Fiona said, that when people say, 'This can't happen in this day and age', they say it because it is happening.

But Sophie and Howl were holding one another's hand and smiling and smiling, quite unable to stop. Don't bother me know, said Howl. I only did it for the money. Liar!said Sophie. I said, Michael said, that Calcifer's come back! That did get Howl's attention and Sophie's too.

Not likely!" Howl yelled. "I'm a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell my self I'm not doing it!

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

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

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.

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

It was a perfectly normal May Day, but Sophie was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume spotted Sophie and decided to accost her as well, Sophie shrank into a shop doorway and tried to hide. The young man looked at her in surprise. It's all right, you little gray mouse, he said laughing rather pityingly. I only want to buy you a drink. Don't look so scared.

You cannot rob robbers with a kitten in your hat!