Top 250 Diana Wynne Jones Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Sophie listened and felt sad. Interesting things did seem to happen, but always to somebody else.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

102. “Go to bed, you fool,” Calcifer said sleepily. “You’re drunk.” “Who, me?” said Howl. “I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

103. “What’s the good of being civilized, that’s what I’d like to know? It just means other people can break the rules and you can’t.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

104. “Howl’s very fickle,” said Calcifer. “He’s only interested until the girl falls in love with him. Then he can’t be bothered with her.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

105. “Mother knows you don’t have to be unkind to someone in order to exploit them.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

106. “As often happened, Charmain began to despair of getting her mother to understand. She’s not stupid, she just never lets her mind out, she thought.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

107. “Apply your fiendish mind to the matter,” said Howl. “Or even think, if you know how.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

108. “Evidently she was one of those people who like to cling to a theory once they have made it.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

109. “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

110. “My mother says that laundry breeds if you don’t wash it.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

111. “If you knew the trouble we’ve had because Howl will keep falling in love like this! We’ve had lawsuits, and suitors with swords, and mothers with rolling pins, and fathers and uncles with cudgels. And aunts. Aunts are terrible. They go for you with hat pins.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

112. “O most excellent of carpets,” he said, “O brightest-colored and most delicately woven, whose lovely textile is so cunningly enhanced with magic, I fear I have not treated you hitherto with proper respect. I have snapped commands and even shouted at you, where I now see that your gentle nature requires only the mildest of requests. Forgive, oh, forgive!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

113. “She stared at the King. The King stared back. It was a disaster.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

114. “She had said Sophie was a witch. Oddly enough, Sophie accepted this without any trouble at all. That explained the popularity of certain hats, she thought. It explained Jane Farrier’s Count Whatsit. It possibly explained the jealousy of the Witch of the Waste. It was as if Sophie had always known this. But she had thought it was not proper to have a magic gift because she was the eldest of three.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

115. “Sophie knew Howl could sound unhappy in heaven if it suited him.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

116. “You people keep spoiling my plans. First Wizard Suliman would not come near the Waste, so that I had to threaten Princess Valeria in order to make the King order him out here. Then, when he came, he grew trees.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

117. “Or had Howl slithered out so hard that he had come out right behind himself and turned out what most people would call honest?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

118. “I put my arms round her. For just a mere, single instant I had a real, heavy body in my arms and a moist face against my cheek, with a real, difficult personality to go with them.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

119. “If you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

120. “Of course you hate getting angry!” she retorted. “You don’t like anything unpleasant, do you? You’re a slitherer-outer, that’s what you are! You slither away from anything you don’t like!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

121. “In fact, Cat was fairly sure Tonino was feeling just the way Cat had felt himself when he first came to Chrestomanci Castle, and Cat could not get over the annoyance of having someone have feelings that were his.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

122. “She had a silly impulse to add, But she was alive an hour ago! And she stopped herself, because death is like that: people are alive until they die.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

123. “A book for children, like the myths and folktales that tend to slide into it, is really a blueprint for dealing with life. For that reason, it might have a happy ending, because nobody ever solved a problem while believing it was hopeless. It might put the aims and the solution unrealistically high – in the same way that folktales tend to be about kings and queens – but this is because it is better to aim for the moon and get halfway there than just to aim for the roof and get halfway upstairs.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

124. “Sophie and Howl were living – somewhat quarrelsomely it must be confessed, although they were said to be happiest that way – in the moving castle again.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

125. “Settle for what you can get, but first ask for the World. – Ka’a Ort’o, Gnomic Utterances, Civ.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

126. “People are wrong when they say things like, “I didn’t have time to think.” If you’re really worried, or really miserable, those feelings come welling up around the edges of the other things you’re doing, so that you are in the feelings even when you’re working hard at something else.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

127. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

128. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

129. “Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

130. “Sophie got out the modish black-and-white, which was the only hat even remotely likely to interest this lady. The lady looked at it with contempt. “This one doesn’t do anything for anybody. You’re wasting my time, Miss Hatter.” “Only because you came in and asked for hats,” Sophie said.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

131. “That is the path of Wickedness, though some call it the Road to Heaven.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

132. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

133. “And indeed if you think you’re a genius at something what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you’re no good, you’re not going to get anywhere.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

134. “I feel ill,” he announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

135. “You’ve rotted your mind with reading books.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

136. “For answer, Calcifer stretched out a blue arm-shaped flame divided into green fingerlike flames at the end. It was not very long, nor did it look strong. “See? I can almost reach the hearth,” he said proudly.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

137. “You won’t believe the amount of trouble we get because Howl keeps falling in love,” Michael said, “We’ve had law suits, suitors with challenges, fathers with cudgels, mothers with rolling pins. And aunts. Aunts are terrible, they go for you with hat pins.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

138. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

139. “It was time for a strong-minded woman to take charge. Abdullah was quite glad that Sophie was one.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

140. “A very short burst of thought was enough to convince Abdullah that his situation, despite the chains, would be very much worse if he became a toad.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

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

— Diana Wynne Jones

142. “I’ve seen golems. They don’t behave like a real person.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

143. “My word, he’s ugly!′ Howl said. ‘Chip off the old block.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

144. “Nobody’s safe in a wizard’s house.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

145. “Why am I holding a dog full of angels?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

146. “In a way it was worth it, she thought, except that it was such a total waste.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

147. “But most dragons seem to have interesting personalities – besides probably having quite good reasons for what they do, if only one could understand them.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

148. “Zip! Back to the mansion. Zip! to Market Square. Zip! and there was the castle yet again. She was getting the hang of it. Zip! Here was Upper Folding – but how did you stop? Zip! “Oh, confound it!” Sophie cried, almost in Marsh Folding again.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

149. “She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

150. “She stood with her nose up, sniffing delightedly. It was the delicious mildewy fragrance of old books. Hundreds of them, she saw, looking round the room. Books were lined up on shelves on all four walls, stacked on the floor, and piled on the desk, old books in leather covers mostly, although some of the ones on the floor had newer looking colored jackets.”

— Diana Wynne Jones