Top 250 Diana Wynne Jones Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Why am I holding a dog full of angels?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

152. “When you grow up to be an author and write books, you’ll think you’re making the books up, but they’ll all really be true, somewhere.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

153. “The most she knew about gardens was the Bakers’ own backyard, which contained one large mulberry tree and a rosebush, plus the window boxes where her mother grew runner beans. She knew there was earth under the plants and that the earth contained worms. She shuddered.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

154. “I’ve been feeling rather bloodthirsty lately, and saving the world seemed a good way to use it.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

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

— Diana Wynne Jones

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

— Diana Wynne Jones

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

— Diana Wynne Jones

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

— Diana Wynne Jones

159. “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

160. “By this time, half the people in High Norland were gathered in Royal Square to stare at the castle. They all watched with disbelief as the castle rose slightly into the air and glided toward the road that led southward. It was hardly more than an alley, really. “It’ll never fit!” people said. But the castle somehow squeezed itself narrow enough to drift away along it and out of sight. The citizens of High Norland gave it a cheer as it went.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

161. “Somewhere in the lane after that they came level with a small door next to a fried chicken shop. There was a small red-lit sign over this door.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

162. “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.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

163. “I was meaning to be kind to you this evening, but you make it very difficult.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

164. “It seems that Fate has decreed that I live through my entire daydream in reality!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

165. “That can go in the cabinet, and so can this One Ring. No, don’t put it on, you fool! It’s dangerous!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

166. “Charles liked poetry because the lines were so short. You could think your own thoughts in the spaces around the print.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

167. “Howl preferred Miss Angorian.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

168. “I may be clever, she thought, quite sadly, but I’m not in the least kind or sympathetic.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

169. “Then the geese replaced themselves with six pigs and vanished.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

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

— Diana Wynne Jones

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

— Diana Wynne Jones

172. “But her eyes were blue and full of anxieties, and her hair was darkish.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

173. “We can’t all be Mad Hatters,” said Howl.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

174. “I’ve never seen why people put such value on things being natural,” Howl said, and Sophie knew then that he was scarcely changed at all.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

175. “By now it was clear that Calcifer did all the strong magic in the castle and Michael did all the hackwork, while Howl gadded off catching girls and exploiting the other two just as Fanny had exploited her.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

176. “Oh, how your ears flap and your long nose twitches!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

177. “I like you, too!” she blubbered at the top of her voice. “I do, I do. You’re a lovely Goon. You’re my favourite Goon in all the world!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

178. “Howl conjured another wad of handkerchiefs and glowered at Sophie over them out of eyes that were now red-rimmed and watery. Then he stood up. ‘I feel ill,’ he announced. ‘I’m going to bed, where I may die.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

179. “It’s silly to let the bad things come out on top! The good, happy things are just as important. They just don’t seem to last. You want to catch them at their best and keep them if you can.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

180. “The tiny princess glanced up with a shy smile. “Boyth, all,” she said, in a small, lisping voice. Morgan’s.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

181. “I don’t know, Your Majesty. He’s a mess.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

182. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that the Devil, however he appears, is never a perfect gentleman?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

183. “You can’t alter the past. The only thing you can alter is the future. People write stories pretending you can alter the past, but it can’t be done. All you can do to the past is remember it wrong or interpret it differently, and that’s no good to us.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

184. “My impression,” said the King, “was that Howl is an unprincipled, slippery rogue with a glib tongue and a clever mind. Would you agree?”

— Diana Wynne Jones

185. “The best advice for dealing with cats is: Always greet them politely. Don’t make an unnecessary fuss over them. Be on the alert for signs they want to communicate with you. Never, ever laugh at them! If you’re lucky, you might just find that your cat will decide that you are a magical person worthy of attention. Or then again, maybe they’d just like some fish.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

186. “Nobody’s safe in a wizard’s house,” Calcifer said feelingly.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

187. “When your surname is Smith, you need to make very sure everyone knows just which Smith you are.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

188. “People with nine lives are very important and very rare. They only happen when, for one reason or another, there are no counterparts of them living in any other world. Then the lives that would have been spread out over a whole set of worlds get concentrated in one person. And so do all the talents that those other eight people might have had.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

189. “Sophie did not care to think how Howl might react if Fanny woke him by stabbing him with her parasol. “No, no!” she said. “Howl has been very kind to me.” And this was true, Sophie realized. Howl showed his kindness rather strangely, but, considering all Sophie had done to annoy him, he had been very good to her indeed.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

190. “You’ll be the death of me! You’re as heartless as Howl!” Calcifer choked.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

191. “You can’t be fussy when you’re off to seek your fortune.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

192. “If you annoy me, watch out! I shall put you in a book as a baddie and then make people laugh at you.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

193. “Seeing Seb’s jeering face, it came to her that Seb had always loved her the way most people bear a grudge.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

194. “Look at it! It’s ginger! I shall have to hide until it’s grown out! Despair! Anguish! Horror!”

— Diana Wynne Jones

195. “She held one of her father’s huge juicy pasties in one hand and munched it as she read. Crumbs kept falling on her book and she brushed them off with the pasty when they fell on the page she was reading.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

196. “But what call has he to be walking around in a charmed suit? It is a dazzling attraction charm, directed at ladies – very well done, I admit, and barely detectable even to my trained eye, since it appears to have been darned into the seams – and one which will render him almost irresistible to ladies. This represents a downward trend into black arts which must surely cause you some motherly concern, Mrs. Pendragon.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

197. “Perhaps she was a little mad, but then old women often were.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

198. “If you stood up and told the truth in the wrong way, it was not true any longer, though it might be as powerful as ever.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

199. “His bedroom door did escape him. “What a lie that was!” Howl remarked as he walked into the wall. “My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.” He walked into the wall several times more, in several different places, before he discovered his bedroom door and crashed his way through it. Sophie could hear him falling about, saying that his bed was dodging.”

— Diana Wynne Jones

200. “He could not believe things could get any worse – so they had to get better.”

— Diana Wynne Jones