Diana Wynne Jones quotes

Diana Wynne Jones was a British author best known for her fantasy novels for children and young adults. Her works, including the popular "Howl’s Moving Castle," are acclaimed for their imagination, wit, and inventive storytelling. She inspired generations of readers and writers with her unique worlds and memorable characters. Here are 144 of her quotes:

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.

Diana Wynne Jones

"One person ought to treat another person properly, even if the person's himself." "What a strange idea!" Mordion said.

Diana Wynne Jones

One does not want glory accepted as a matter of course. One wants to shock and astonish people with it.

Diana Wynne Jones

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.

Diana Wynne Jones

By now it was clear that Howl was in a mood to produce green slime any second. Sophie hurriedly put her sewing away. "I'll make some hot buttered toast," she said. "Is that all you can do in the face of tragedy??" Howl asked. "Make toast!

Diana Wynne Jones

She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word.

Diana Wynne Jones

A heart's a heavy burden.

Diana Wynne Jones

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

Diana Wynne Jones

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

Diana Wynne Jones

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

Diana Wynne Jones

I've got a hangover." "No, you hit your head on the floor." "I can't stay. I've got to rescue that fool Sophie.

Diana Wynne Jones

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

Diana Wynne Jones

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

Diana Wynne Jones

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.

Diana Wynne Jones

And you're too nice," he added, above the lap-lap of the water and the patter of sand on the water-lily leaves. "I was relying on you being too jealous to let that demon near the place.

Diana Wynne Jones

Calcifer," Sophie said, "I shall have to break your contract. Will it kill you?" "It would if anyone else broke it," Calcifer said hoarsely. "That's why I asked you to do it.

Diana Wynne Jones

Beauty isn't made of sugar.

Diana Wynne Jones

So you'll be wanting all these hydrangeas chopped down, then?" "Whatever for?" Charmain said. "I like to chop things down," the kobold explained. "Chief pleasure of gardening.

Diana Wynne Jones

"This is a very old argument. The greatest happiness of the greatest number. If you think about it, you'll find it always works out that a few suffer for the good of the rest." "In stories," Gair agreed hopelessly. "brave men die defending the rest. But this isn't like that!" "Call it the modern version," Mr Claybury suggested kindly.

Diana Wynne Jones

It looks as if you need only enter the field for long enough to recognise the bannus and take hold of it. Then you order it to stop." "Fight my way through a mob of dancing girls and snatch the dulcimer off the leading damsel," Reigner Two said morbidly. "I can just see myself. I think the fools who invented this thing might have thought of a simpler way to stop it. What's wrong with a red switch?

Diana Wynne Jones

Dear Polly, Tom wishes you, for some reason I can't understand, to consider the human back. He says there are many other matters you should consider too, but that was a particularly glaring example. He invites you, he says, to walk along a beach this summer and watch the male citizens there sunning themselves. There you will see backs - backs stringy, backs bulging, and backs with ingrained dirt. You will find, he says, yellow skin, blackheads, pimples, enlarged pores and tufts of hair. This is making me ill, but Tom says go on. Peeling sunburn, warts, boils, moles and midge bites and floppy rolls of skin. Even a back without these blemishes, he claims, seldom or never ripples, unless with gooseflesh. In fact, he defies you to find an inch of silk or a single powerful muscle in any hundred yards of average sunbathers. I hope you know what all this is about, because I don't. I think you should stay away from the seaside if you can. Yours ever, Sam.

Diana Wynne Jones

"Look here," Gerald said, "what do you think of Giants?" There was the kind of pause that happens when people do not like to say what they really think.

Diana Wynne Jones