Top 250 Diana Wynne Jones Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

52. “Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

53. “Nobody gets praised for the right reasons.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

54. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

55. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

56. “That’s magic I admire, using something that exists anyway and turning it round into a curse.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

57. “One person ought to treat another person properly, even if the person’s himself.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

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

— Diana Wynne Jones

59. “I seem to have excalibured this knife.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

60. “In addition, Master Twinkle seems convinced that someone is denying him a pair of stripey trousers.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

61. “Typical! I break my neck trying to get here, and I find you peacefully tidying up!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

62. “Mother Very Easily Made Jam Sandwiches Under No Protest.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

63. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

64. “You have no right to make jigsaws of people.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

65. “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

66. “But whoever heard of enchanted bacon anyway?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

67. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

68. “He scarcely saw his parents. When Christopher was small, he was terrified that he would meet Papa out walking in the Park one day and not recognize him.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

69. “But I do think that when people say ‘a learning curve,’ they make a mistake. Learning to me always seems to go in a straight, ignorant line and then, every so often, takes a jump straight upward.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

70. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

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

— Diana Wynne Jones

72. “I feel ill,” he announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.” He tottered piteously to the stairs. “Bury me beside Mrs. Pentstemmon,” he croaked as he went up then to bed.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

73. “I remember passing the tomboy, sitting in her special place of punishment opposite the bully. She was blazing with her deed, as if she had actually been touched by a god. And I thought that this confirmed all my theories: a child in her position is open to any heroic myth I care to use; she is inward with folktales; she would feel the force of any magical or divine intervention.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

74. “I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

75. “It was odd. As a girl, Sophie would have shriveled with embarrassment at the way she was behaving. As an old woman, she did not mind what she did or said. She found that a great relief.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

76. “All power corrupts, but we need electricity.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

77. “She was remorseless, but she lacked method.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

78. “She stood for a moment looking out at a slowly moving view of the hills, watching heather slide past underneath the door, feeling the wind blow her wispy hair, and listening to the rumble and grind of the big black stones as the castle moved.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

79. “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

80. “Take it from me, Fate doesn’t care most of the time.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

81. “SAGE. A wise and Holy man who died a long time ago. No one modern qualifies.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

82. “When there’s need enough, a way can often be found.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

83. “It just lies behind the slightly more normal things I do do. This sense that most people are crazy, if you look deep enough. Adults particularly, and children have to deal with them.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

84. “It was a very powerful politeness.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

85. “You do not seem to me to be a beast. This makes me quite sure that you can’t really be a man.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

86. “Ann left him there, kneeling among the violets looking out into the fog as if that glimpse of the castle had somehow broken his heart.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

87. “Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

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

— Diana Wynne Jones

89. “You owe me. You roasted my father.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

90. “I think it was then that it dawned on me that Mum wasn’t going to notice Chris was missing. She has been made so that she thinks Chris is just round the corner all the time. She doesn’t realise that she never sees him. I don’t know why I didn’t understand earlier. If Aunt Maria can turn Chris into a wolf, she’s surely strong enough to do this to Mum- except that it seems a different kind of thing, much more natural and ordinary, and I didn’t really think she could do both kinds.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

91. “There’s an enormous library, which boasts a copy of every book in the world – and many more from other worlds as well.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

92. “Sophie shrugged again. She would have to deal with that problem when she came back.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

93. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

94. “I hope your bacon burns.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

95. “If it had not been time to get up, he would have gone straight back to the beginning and started reading the book again.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

96. “What a strange family you are! Is your name Lettie too?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

97. “Is that all you can do in the face of tragedy?” Howl asked. “Make toast!?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

98. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

99. “Be daffodils in June, you beastly things!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

100. “Oh! Polly thought. Why aren’t all girls locked up by law the year they turn fifteen? They do such stupid things!”

— Diana Wynne Jones